Cancer Patient Dresses As Wonder Woman For Last Day Of Chemo, Becomes Our New Hero

Cancer Patient Dresses As Wonder Woman For Last Day Of Chemo

A cancer patient decided to show the disease who's boss by dressing up as her favourite superhero, Wonder Woman, for her last day of chemotherapy.

Danielle Javernig from Brisbane, Australia, was diagnosed with breast cancer in May of this year.

Since then, the mum-of-two has had a double mastectomy, surgery to remove 32 lymph nodes and rounds of chemotherapy.

"All through chemo you sit there and it’s very depressing and everyone is sick and feeling horrible. On the last day I wanted it to not be like that at all," she said, according to Daily Mail Australia.

Javernig realised something was wrong with her health earlier this year when she woke up in the night with a severe stabbing pain in her right breast.

Tests at the hospital revealed she had a faulty BRCA1 gene. Everyone has the BRCA1 gene, but according to the NHS, if there’s a fault or mutation in the gene the risk of an individual developing breast cancer is high.

Javernig was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer - a rare strain of the disease that does not respond to hormonal therapy and affects just one in five breast cancer sufferers.

According to Macmillan Cancer Support, treatment for triple negative breast cancer can be particularly difficult, as women are usually given chemotherapy even when the cancer is low-grade.

Javernig has been a fan of Wonder Woman since she was given a costume of the superhero as a child.

On the last day of her chemo she donned the classic hot pants and red boots while other members of her family also dressed up as superheroes.

Her five-year-old twin daughters, Abby and Sophie, dressed as Iron Man and Cat Woman.

"Everybody was coming up and telling me how wonderful it was, they said I brightened their day, and that was half the point," she said.

Although the 43-year-old has now finished chemo she still has to undergo radiation treatment five days each week for a further five weeks.

She's also booked in to have a hysterectomy in the new year as a faulty BRCA1 gene also increases a person's risk of ovarian cancer.

Having a faulty BCR1 gene is genetic, but Javernig was unaware of a family history of it.

After her diagnosis a geneticist looked into her family history and found that four women on one side of her family had died of breast cancer in their forties.

Her mum and sisters are currently undergoing tests to check for the faulty gene.

Javernig is now encouraging other women to research their family history and find out if there is a history of the faulty gene in their family.

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