When Karina Topp crosses the finish line of the Very Pink Run next Sunday, it will be a great achievement for the mother of two, who underwent a year of treatment for breast cancer following the shock diagnosis in June last year.
“I’m currently in the middle of the 15th round of targeted therapy,” she says. “I finished my chemotherapy in January and then in March I had my surgery, a bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction.”
Based on the results, my oncologist changed my three-month plan and prescribed me a targeted therapy, which I will continue until January. And then hopefully this will be over. A month ago I started a drug called tamoxifen, which I will take for five to ten years.’
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As a mother of two boys, Alex (12) and Adam (8), it was difficult for Karina and her husband Robert to tell them about their diagnosis. “It is extremely difficult to find the right words to tell your children that you have cancer,” she says.
Karina continues: “It was difficult for me to tell my children: ‘I have cancer’. Being open and honest with them was very important to me. Above all, I wanted to reassure them that Mom would be OK.
“That’s the part of my diagnosis that still brings tears to my eyes. Thankfully, I have incredibly resilient boys who are coping really well and have had the most wonderful support and understanding from their friends.”
But there was someone else in the boys’ lives who also helped them – their aunt Aine, Karina’s sister-in-law. She had also had breast cancer a few years ago and was now well again.
“You do everything you can to protect your children from worry and harm,” she explains. “To be told that you are the person who may bring stress, anxiety, worry and disruption into their lives is not something you want to experience.”
“My sister-in-law Aine’s experience was also a comfort to them because they had someone they could look to and say: ‘Okay, Aine felt the same way. She’s fine now, so Mom will be too. Mom will be fine.'”
Karina also found comfort in Aine’s experiences, and she always had someone to talk to about what she was going through.
“Aine was incredible,” says Karina. “She just went through it all. She had twin girls who were not even a year old at home and she got through it really well and recovered well. Then when I got the diagnosis – and even before the diagnosis, when I found a lump myself – I was able to talk to her about it and ask her questions.”
Karina adds: “She was fine, she was doing great. She was healthy, happy, back at work and living a normal life. But even before I started treatment, I knew I would be in the same situation because I had someone very close to me who had been through the same journey.”
“Even though we had slightly different treatment plans and were in different hospitals, it was still the breast cancer journey. It was still a chemotherapy journey, it was still a surgery journey, so she could relate to a lot of it, but just knowing and being able to see that she was OK – that gave me the reassurance that I was going to be OK, and it gave my children the reassurance that I was going to be OK.”
Karina is participating in the Very Pink Run this year as an ambassador, together with Author Cathy Kelly, who is also currently undergoing breast cancer treatment. Karina wanted to talk about her own experience to raise funds and awareness, because without her sister-in-law, she would not have been so keen on getting regular check-ups.
Say hello to Karina Topp, a Very Pink Run ambassador! Karina will be taking part in the Very Pink Run Dublin event on August 31st. Be sure to come along and show her your support! #VeryPinkRun2024 pic.twitter.com/OUEFHXiOQG
— Very Pink Run (@VeryPinkRun) July 24, 2024
Taking part in the Very Pink Run to raise much-needed funds for breast cancer research is easy: register online, gather your ‘Pink Tribe’ by encouraging your friends and family to do the same, then take part in one of three live events in Dublin, Kilkenny or Cork – or alternatively join your individual or group run or walk next week.
The Dublin 10k starts at 12pm, the 5k at 12:45pm on August 31st at Leopardstown Race Course, Dublin 18, in Kilkenny it is at the same time on September 1st at The Watershed and in Cork the times are the same and the run is at MTU, Cork on September 8th. For more information and to register visit verypinkrun.ie.
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