As someone who has experienced breast cancer and now works to raise awareness of its effects, Dr. Liz O’Riordan exemplifies the aims of Cambridge Pink Week: to educate, donate and support. The former Consultant Oncoplastic Breast Surgeon has helped to set up the charity, CancerFit, and co-authored The Complete Guide to Breast Cancer – so she knows the importance of Cambridge’s annual week-long series of events that fundraise for breast cancer charities. As vice-president of Pink Week, I spoke to O’Riordan about her journey and what we can all learn from it.

“When you don’t see role models, you don’t know how to act,” she says, looking thoughtful from her portion of the Zoom screen, as she recalls her days as a medical student. O’Riordan is open and chatty, with an energy that I’m struggling to match on a Monday afternoon. “There were very few female surgical role models when I was a junior doctor,” she continues. She estimates that there was perhaps one in Cardiff, where she trained in the 1990s, and another in the whole of north-west Wales. “It was very much a man’s world.”

In 2015, at the age of forty, O’Riordan was diagnosed with grade 3 breast cancer. Being forced to retire in her early forties wasn’t something O’Riordan ever saw coming. “I missed scrubbing up. I missed talking to people. It was such a natural part of my life.” A week after her diagnosis, she embarked on five months of chemotherapy, before undergoing a mastectomy and implant reconstruction. The cancer spread to her lymph nodes, and more surgery and radiotherapy followed. The drug she was taking, Tamoxifen, brought with it instant menopause and chronic pain. Suddenly, her career posed difficult questions. Could she cope with telling someone they had cancer, having been in their shoes? Could she operate knowing the pain her knife could cause?

O’Riordan’s career had defined her identity. “It’s all-consuming,” she admits, matter-of-factly. There was always homework; audits, exam revision, and even a PhD in the molecular biology of cancer. Yet it is the emotional impact of her diagnosis which O’Riordan emphasises. As O’Riordan struggled with her position as a doctor-turned-patient, the line between science and emotion was often blurred.

“I had to be the bad guy in that interaction, despite also being a patient,” she explains. There is a straightforwardness to the way she talks about her experiences, probably as a result of the many interviews and public speaking engagements she has completed – including at TEDx Stuttgart. But her passion for helping others is obvious. “I was aware of how much more I could do to help, but it wasn’t my job as a surgeon,” she sighs. Work, sex, getting their lives back – O’Riordan knew these things ought to be talked about, but she never got to hear what the breast care nurses told her patients once they left the room.

“The line between science and emotion was often blurred”

This is exactly why the aim of Pink Week this year was not only to educate students about the risk factors of breast cancer, but also how to support their own loved ones. Pink Week has partnered with a wide range of charities this year: Breast Cancer UK, Teenage Cancer Trust, CoppaFeel! and Future Dreams. From national to local, scientific to practical and emotional, and across all ages and genders, these charities make a real difference to people living with breast cancer and their loved ones. O’Riordan herself contacted Working with Cancer, an organisation for whom she is now an ambassador, after her first surgery. She had only been back at work for six months when the cancer recurred on her chest wall in 2018. More surgery left her unable to fully move her left shoulder, unable to operate.

“It was a relief, in some ways,” she says, reflecting on having to stop working. Operating on people when she knew what it was like to be a patient had been difficult. The daily fear of a recurrence, and the experience of losing some of the friends she had made over social media who also had cancer, had taken a toll on her mental health. She now runs a WhatsApp group for doctors with cancer, and emphasises the importance of finding forums or support groups. “We often treat doctors differently because we think they know everything,” she tells me. Many more doctors are now talking about their diagnoses, often anonymously, but the issue of how patients are spoken to and supported has been brought into sharper focus for O’Riordan since her diagnosis.

“Cancer is a tiny part of you. I’m a wife, a step-granny, and a friend”

But what does “support” really mean, and how do we give it? Funnily enough, what O’Riordan wanted to talk about while she was undergoing chemotherapy was soap operas. “It’s hard to let people in – you don’t want them to know what’s going on inside your mind,” she explains. It turns out that the best way to help someone with cancer is to allow them to feel like themselves. Conversations don’t have to, and shouldn’t, revolve around cancer. “Cancer is a tiny part of you. I’m a wife, a step-granny, and a friend.”

This year, Pink Week has hosted events, not just centrally, but across 18 colleges to raise money to help charities which have struggled to fundraise during the pandemic, and patients who may have faced cancer alone. From a ball to karaoke and a fashion show, we hope our message to educate, donate and support will be louder than ever – but it isn’t just money which makes a difference. Sometimes, all it takes is a chat about soap operas.