WATCH: 26 year old shares her inspiring breast cancer battle in bid to support others

When this young woman faced the biggest challenge of her life, she turned her tragedy into something positive and supported women everywhere going through a similar ordeal.

Amber Arkell Facebook

by Hayley Kadrou |
Published on

At the age of only 26, Amber Arkell is already battling breast cancer.

After being diagnosed with the disease at stage one, grade three (meaning the cancer cells look most changed and usually fast-growing) last year, the young woman from Auckland, New Zealand underwent a partial mastectomy to remove her 15mm tumour in December 2015.

And as she continues her fight, Amber remains as positive as possible, and has even created her own Facebook group to both document her journey and offer help and support to women going through a similar situation.

The page, called 'When Things Go T*ts Up', already has over 1000 likes on Facebook.

One video in particular has caught the attention of people all over New Zealand and beyond.

In the candid clip, Amber reveals:

"I've just found out this side of Christmas, just a few weeks ago, that my tumour has gone from a grade two to a grade three...

"So what that means is that, with that combined with my age, the specialists want to do four months of chemotherapy, which they weren't expecting."

"I am currently going through essenitally an IVF process... and then we have to cross the bridge of going into chemotherapy."

egg injection
©amber arkell facebook

"Final injection pre egg collection. This is a little different tonight and acts as the "activator" for Wednesday procedure smile emoticon 36 hours from now this phase in the journey will nearly be finished."

She went on in the video to say:

"At this stage I've got an entire calendar year of treatment coming up, which is scary.

"It feels like a big hill to climb."

See goes on to explain how lucky she is to have options of treatment and medication, unlike so many.

"Obviously I've had some down times... It's a roller coaster and has been hard on my friends and family, not only myself."

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, she said:

"The more I talk about my breast cancer, the better I feel about the whole thing"

"I'm a bit of a control freak so as soon as I was diagnosed I was almost relieved as I could make a plan again."

Amber explains how she plans to shave her head next week, as she doesn't want to wait for it to fall out.

She also explained that she plans to document her entire journey - the highs and the lows, adding:

"Since I've started the blog I've had as many as 20 women tell me their story - every single one is different.

"It's extremely important to me to educate my friends and wider circle about breast cancer as I don't want any of them to go through the same thing.’

"My friends keep telling me they've never touched their breasts as much and I feel as though I'm running two businesses as I'm working and simultaneously researching everything I can about my condition and upcoming treatment."

Watch the full video by Amber HERE.

For more information on breast cancer, please visit: www.breastcancercare.org.uk

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