AUDREY Allan has a date at Holyrood tomorrow night, speaking to a large number of MSPs. She is, she acknowledges, slightly nervous about the prospect, but she anticipates that the excitement of the occasion will outweigh the nerves.

The 36-year-old primary school teacher will be one of the speakers at the launch of Breast Cancer Care Scotland’s Moving Forward report, which calls for everyone in Scotland to receive vital support to help them adapt to life after breast cancer. And her own brush with cancer, and the remarkably candid and inspirational way she dealt with it, makes her a perfect choice to talk to MSPs.

The mother of two young children, Eva, nine, and six-year-old Logan, Audrey Allan was just 34 when, almost two years ago, on May 4, 2016, she was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. She underwent chemotherapy but quickly decided to keep a online diary of her experiences. On June 27 she established her very own page on Instagram. Her very first post explained her purpose: it said she hoped “to use this page to use this page to motivate me to stay positive and smiling though this crazy cancer treatment journey.” Bravely, she called it Cancer with a Smile.

Over the weeks and months that followed she posted photographs of herself at various stages of her treatment; she posted motivational statements such as “I want to inspire people. I want someone to look at me and say, ‘Because of you, I didn’t give up’.” People responded to them, too. She struck up online friendships with other women who were enduring the very same treatment for breast cancer. Some of them even formed an Instagram group, the unambiguously titled F——Cancer Club.

Allan never pulled her punches in describing her journey. Looking back in February, for example, she wrote: “Sometimes it can feel like cancer is crushing you. I remember when I first got my diagnosis I couldn’t even say the word ‘cancer’ without feeling like I was going to throw up. It was actually making me so anxious, I tried to desensitised myself by saying it over and over again in the mirror until cancer stopped making my heart lunge. It never totally goes away and with there being so many adverts it’s impossible to escape. Most of the time it slips by but sometimes I lie in bed and it crushes my like a pile of bricks!”

Other posts show how she tried to remain positive. One night in bed she wept, consumed with dread, at the thought of her blonde hair “shedding like a Labrador” during her chemotherapy. The idea occurred to her: why not take control instead and undergo a sponsored head shave for charity? So she did; and she not only raised £3000 but also “gained a priceless amount of confidence.”

Her social media activities without question helped her and her family - Eva, Logan and husband Stewart - through it all. In January, she wrote: “While I was wading through the crap of cancer my Instagram page gave me hope, encouragement and a lot of love. I really felt like the people I found through these little squares had my back and cared about me.”

As of yesterday her 1,142 Instagram posts had attracted 5,778 followers. Since August 2016 she has written a blog, also called Cancer with a Smile. It led to her being shortlisted for the 2018 UK Blog Awards, which took place in London’s Grosvenor Square last Friday. (“A little gutted not to come home with a prize but making a bunch of fantastic new friends was amazing,” she wrote on Instagram afterwards). She believes that contributions such as hers reflect the positive, enabling side of social media. Now, she says, she is at work on a book about her experiences, and hopes to find a publisher.

Certainly, Allan’s blog and Instagram posts have spoken to her resilience. “That’s the vibe I’ve got, really, from having done my Instagram page then having gone on to write my blog,” she says. “It seemed to help other people but it really, really helped me get through it as well, because I got so much positive feedback.

“I posted on Instagram almost every day and when I look at it all I think, ‘Gosh, I really documented this in a lot of depth. It became quite a big part of my life. It got me through each day. Because you’re not feeling well, you can’t go out and about as much, and it was something that I felt I could connect with people with when I wasn’t feeling great.

“I was just really open and honest and I think people appreciated that. As much as it was about being positive I didn’t sugar-coat it and I was really honest about the difficulties. Because of course there are lots of difficulties involved. People appreciated it from both ways: you want somebody who is going to boost you and make you feel better about things, but you also want somebody who sympathises with the fact that you’re having a hard time.”

Sometimes, however, the hard times continue well beyond the actual treatment for the illness. Allan herself says that she was sure that 2017 was going to be an “amazing” year for her, but moving on turned out to be considerably harder than she had expected. To complicate matters, her hormone treatment sent her into the menopause, something that she says takes a huge toll on her, physically as well as mentally.

Breast Cancer Care’s Moving Forward report, which was launched at Westminster last December, described how the charity’s Moving Forward course helps people with breast cancer to adjust to life after finishing hospital treatment and manage any long-term side effects. Breast Cancer Care’s Head of Scotland, Angela Harris, says: “Our new report not only demonstrates the invaluable impact the course has on wellbeing, but also its ability to ease the immense pressures on the health service. We are calling on NHS Scotland to ensure that everyone with breast cancer has access to a tailored course, such as Moving Forward, after finishing treatment.”

“When I finished my treatment I expected to be over the moon,” Allan says now, “and to be celebrating a really great time because you’ve spent so long going through all your treatment, which has been very, very difficult. But actually when you get to the end of it you feel a little bit lost. I felt slightly lost, as if I was expected to get on with things, though the hospital had been fantastic during my treatment. It’s then that, instead of thinking about your physical health all the time, you’re thinking about your mental health, because you’ve been through this really hard period in your life. It comes as quite a shock.

“Having been on the course, and spoken to a lot of the women who were there - there were about 15 of us on it - everybody came out with the same observation that you’re a little bit flat: you expect to be really delighted that it’s all over but actually you don’t really know what to do with yourself. Having cancer is almost like a full-time job. You’ve got appointments all the time. You’re busy just trying to get your head down and trying to get through the treatment, which is so difficult. But when you get to the end everybody expects you to get back to normal. But you don’t feel like the same person anymore, because you’ve had such a hard time.

“There are still a lot of side-effects from your treatment, physically as well as mentally. The best thing about the course for me was that you got to meet other people who’d been through the same thing as you. You can talk openly with them, where with your friends and family, sometimes it’s really hard to be honest about it, because you knew you might be upsetting them as well. We had professionals from different departments talking to us about different things to do with breast cancer. That was really helpful. There was also a counsellor, who talked about mental health and how everybody was feeling about having finished treatment. And somebody else spoke about getting active, because a lot of people who’ve been through cancer treatment put on weight because they’re not as active as they were before.”

Two years since her diagnosis, Allan is in “really good” health. “I’m still dealing with side-effects, though. I’m on hormone therapy because of the type of tumour I had. So I’m basically in menopause at the age of just 36. That’s actually been one of the hardest parts of the treatment, I think. That came out of a Breast Cancer Care study, that a lot of women are finding that they finish the treatment but that they’re dealing with so many side-effects and so the treatment isn’t finished yet. They’re finding it really difficult because it’s not what they expected it to be like. So I’m going through menopausal symptoms when all my friends are having babies. It’s a really strange place to be - but, apart from that, my health is really good. And I’ve become focused on looking after myself because I’ve been so unwell. I got into yoga when I was going through my treatment and that has helped me get into a good headspace.”

Allan is now preparing for her speech at Holyrood tomorrow, hosted by Glasgow MSP Sandra White. She has at least had experience of speaking in public before - at a Breast Cancer Care fundraising fashion show. “That was the first time I’d done any speaking in public, and because I’ve done that,” she says, “I feel a lot less nervous about talking to the MSPs.”

** https://cancerwithasmile.com; https://www.breastcancercare.org.uk