A British mum has officially outlived her devastating prognosis, after doctors gave her just three years left to live – being declared ‘no evidence of disease’ remaining.
Claire Webb was just 32 and raising her two-year-old son, Teddy, when she received the news.
She had taken her little boy to a soft play centre when a knock to the chest caused strange swelling – prompting her to ring the doctor.
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Two weeks and numerous tests later, Claire was given a terrifying diagnosis of “very aggressive” stage four breast cancer.
Even more heartbreaking was the news that mum-of-one was unlikely to live to see her son start school in three years’ time.
“It absolutely floored me,” Claire, who works as a team manager at the National Grid in Worcester, told Need To Know.
“I entered a grieving process for the life that I thought I would have – the three little boys that I [hoped to] grow, birth and then nurture into adulthood, the holiday destinations my husband and I spoke about doing when we reached 10/20/30 years married.”
Claire had no idea anything was amiss until the soft play trip in April 2023.
She said: “I knocked my right breast, and within hours it had swelled up and a hard lump formed across the top of my breast.
“My husband, Mike, told me to ring the doctors after it had not gone away a couple of days later.
“I thought it was related to breastfeeding my son – cancer didn’t even enter my head.”
Five days after knocking her chest, Claire went to the doctor and was given an emergency referral – which she put down to her family history of breast cancer, with her grandmother dying of it in the 1980s.
Her appointment came 17 days after the soft play incident, and she was diagnosed the same day.
Claire said: “A nurse checked me over and then told me I would need an ultrasound.
“I remember when she left the room I said to my husband ‘she’s just looked at me like I’m going to die soon’.
“He told me to stop being so silly and it was just procedure.”
But a biopsy found the cancer, with a mammogram confirming the diagnosis.
She went on to have a full-body MRI scan, with doctors initially believing her case to be treatable.
But in early May, her oncologist delivered another blow – that “suspicious spots” had been found on her lung, and a PET scan found that the cancer had spread to her lungs.
It meant that her treatment could only manage the cancer and keep her comfortable – rather than eradicate it.
Claire said: “I didn’t feel unwell at all.
“We’d been trying for our second baby for about 12 months and we weren’t getting pregnant, so we were arranging to see a fertility doctor when I was diagnosed.
“It was extremely difficult to wrap my head around as I didn’t think people could get breast cancer in their thirties.
“It was honestly the biggest shock of my entire life.
“I asked if I would see my little boy start school, and was told only if I was very lucky, and that it is a very aggressive cancer.”
The mum started a cancer journal to put her thoughts to paper, and went into “practical mode” – updating her will, and having heartbreaking discussions with her husband about the possibility of him one day remarrying.
She said: “I went to my local funeral home and we sat for hours discussing my funeral.
“It felt like an out of body experience.”
To ease the transition of having an active mum, she even found herself pulling back from Teddy.
She said: “I loved him so much that I started to withdraw from him to make it easier for when I’m not here.
“I would keep this stiff upper lip and, don’t get me wrong, I love beyond the bones of him but I needed to know he would be OK when I wasn’t here.
“So I stopped playing with him and having too much fun with him.
“Looking back now, it was my way of surviving the shock and trauma that had just landed.”
Claire had eggs taken in June 2023 to honour her dream of expanding their family one day, before starting numerous rounds of chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and radiotherapy.
She said: “Due to chemotherapy needing to start, we had a three-hour window to make the decision to go ahead with embryo freezing and find the money to fund it, as I needed to start the following day.
“I think in those initial days, people thought we were mad to still have this dream of another baby, but it is what kept us going.”
Incredibly, despite the bleak prognosis, after only three chemotherapy sessions, Claire was declared ‘no evidence of disease’ – meaning no cancer has been detected on scans from that point onwards.
Claire said: “It didn’t feel real.
“My oncologist told me I had a guardian angel because this doesn’t happen a lot.
“The best we could hope for in the beginning was that the cancer hadn’t grown and therefore to hear and see that it had disappeared – I think we were all shocked at how well my body responded to treatment.
“Being declared NED is the best result anyone with stage four cancer can hope for, so I feel very lucky that my body has been able to do that.
“It opened a lot more doors for treatment – such as a mastectomy.”
Claire was able to have her right breast removed in a mastectomy in November that year, amidst the other treatments.
Previously, doctors had said that surgery was off the table completely.
While she doesn’t know if it has changed her overall prognosis – as she doesn’t wish to know – Claire continues to have immunotherapy injections ever three weeks and is considered an “exceptional responder” to treatment.
She said: “I am probably the healthiest I have ever been in my life.
“My oncologist is as shocked as we are to this day.
“I haven’t asked [about my prognosis” and wish I never had in the first place – all I know is I’m extremely lucky, and there are lots of drugs available to me now.
“My treatment path changed from palliative care to managing my disease and keeping me comfortable with curable intent – which means some doctors believe I can be cured from stage four breast cancer.
“I have the odd side effects from my immunotherapy injection and I do feel the cold a lot more from lack of lymph nodes, and I do get tired more easily so I am trying to listen to my body more – but overall my health is great.
“My heart is looking good, my lungs are looking good, so physically I am great.”
While the experience has taken a mental toll, she was channelled her energies into personal training sessions at the gym, and is hopeful that she can resume growing her family and give little Teddy a sibling soon.
And most special of all, last September she got to see something she could only have dreamed of just a few years ago: seeing her little boy start school.
Claire added: “Ted starting reception class was the most emotional day of my life.
“Getting his uniform on and walking him into school knowing that there was a time when I didn’t think I would ever do that.
“It makes me sad to think that he and Mike would have had to figure it out themselves without me but here I am – I do school pick up and drop off every single day.
“It is only hospital appointments that stop me from doing the school run.
“I am so obsessed with my little boy because I know how it feels to think you will not ever experience these moments.
“He probably thinks I am so annoying but we were as honest as we could be with Teddy about my diagnosis, and his maturity and kindness just knocks me for six constantly.
“When I was diagnosed initially, I would spend my evenings writing him birthday cards and letters to open at every milestone in his life as I didn’t think I would be here.
“So far, I have managed to throw away two letters as I have been here, living it with him.”
