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Belfast mum Sara McKenzie making "living list" memories as she battles incurable cancer

10 Jun

Belfast mum Sara McKenzie has taken a positive approach to getting the worst news possible, by creating a "living list" for her and her family.

Having survived breast cancer in 2018, while living in England, the primary school teacher and her husband Ross moved home to Belfast last February.

All was going well for the young family, until Sara noticed pains in her back in January of this year.

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Sadly, when she went to her doctors to get it examined, they returned the worst possible news, with Sarah diagnosed with incurable stage four breast cancer.

An MRI scan revealed extensive cancer, in multiple bones, including her hips, pelvis, shoulder blade, ribcage, femur, sternum, and in her spine.

Her spine had fractured in two places due to the extent of the cancer and she was told she may only have three to five years left.

The 37-year-old has already been through a mastectomy as well as radio and chemotherapy during her previous cancer battle in 2018.

This time, she was forced to undergo extensive surgery to place metal rods up the length of her spine and has started chemotherapy.

Sara now wants to create a collection of special memories with Ross, son Noah and four-year-old daughter Willow, in the time left to her.

She said a conversation with her seven-year-old son Noah sparked the idea, when they were talking about her diagnosis and what it meant.

"He said 'do you get a second life mummy, a second chance?' and that's maybe something he's picked up from playing games where you get that," she said.

"I just explained that unfortunately I didn't and from there we started talking about making as many memories together as we can while we're here.

"And on the living list, there are things that are possible to do now and aren't expensive and then there are other things that I'll need to wait until my treatments stabilise.

"One of the things was to see a football game and someone has very kindly donated tickets to the Northern Ireland game on Sunday so we're all going to see that together.

"There are other things like they want to go camping, they want to stay in a caravan so we'll do that at the end of June and then there's things I'd like to do personally with my husband, like climbing the Mourne mountains with my husband."

Sara said many of the items on the list are relatively easy to do but that her sister has set about raising money for doing bigger things that will have to wait until Sara's health is in a stable enough position.

"The big thing we want to do is take the kids to Florida - we had always planned to do that when they were a bit older, but obviously we don't know what time I'm going to have.

"So as soon as really I'm stable enough with my treatment, that's something we'll aim for.

"Noah is obsessed with Harry Potter, so we'll try to get over to London for that too."

She said that she had been so overwhelmed by the generosity shown to her and her family already.

"There's been many times that I've been through social media and seen GoFundMe pages and that and never did I imagine that there would be one about me, it really hits home.

"It makes it more real, but people's generosity has been absolutely amazing.

"I think the support from friends and family, that's what's got me through the last few months, we're just so grateful and thankful."

Sara said she had been through an emotional rollercoaster and that she was trying to focus on enjoying the time that she has left.

"There have been some really hard, challenging times in the last months, but the support form Ross, I couldn't have done it without him, he's been absolutely incredible.

"I have gone to the past and grieved for the person I was, and my life before this and my mind has gone to the future where I'm not there for the children, which is so hard.

"But I'm trying to stay focussed on the present and be so grateful for anything - like this morning I was at the kids' sports day and that for me was so precious to see them, so staying in the present has definitely helped."

Her friends have set up a fundraising page to try and help Sara and her family achieve those goals.

They are also cycling the distance between Newcastle in England and Belfast on exercise bikes to raise money for the family.

Read more: North Belfast woman opens up on realising her life-long dream after cancer battle

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