Television personality Lynette Bolton has revealed she is cancer free after a gruelling 191-day battle with aggressive breast cancer that began just days before Christmas.
The wife of Sydney Swans premiership great Jude Bolton shared the emotional news on Saturday after receiving the pathology results she had been anxiously awaiting since undergoing surgery last week.
For months, Bolton has documented every stage of her fight, from the shock diagnosis and chemotherapy treatments to shaving her head as her hair fell out and undergoing surgery to remove the tumour from her breast.
But just days before learning the outcome, she admitted she still didn’t know whether the cancer was gone.
Earlier this week, Bolton shared a touching conversation with one of her children that captured the uncertainty her family had been living with.
‘Mummy – do you not have cancer anymore?’
Lynette Bolton shared the emotional moment pathology results confirmed no cancer cells were found after 191 days of treatment
The television personality revealed she had achieved a pathological complete response following months of chemotherapy, surgery and recovery
The mother-of-two documented every stage of her cancer battle, from diagnosis through surgery and eventual recovery
‘I don’t know yet angel. I find out on Friday.’
‘Ok. I love you.’
‘I love you too baby.’
On Saturday, Bolton finally had the answer.
‘pCR,’ she wrote on Instagram.
‘= Pathological Complete Response. = No cancer cells found. We bloody did it.’
Thank you for every message, prayer, positive thought and moment of support over the last 191 days. I will be forever grateful.’
The announcement sparked an immediate outpouring of support from followers who had followed every step of her treatment journey.
Bolton underwent a lumpectomy and lymph node removal surgery before receiving the pathology results she desperately awaited
The wife of AFL great Jude Bolton thanked supporters who carried her through treatment and surgery
Friends, family and followers flooded social media with messages celebrating Bolton’s remarkable cancer-free milestone announcement
‘Every day is a gift for all of us. Thanks for the reminder,’ Aussie comedian Dave Hughes wrote.
Another added: ‘The BEST news! I’ve been thinking of you since yesterday and kept checking your insta waiting on this fantastic news! Brave and beautiful.’
One friend revealed how deeply the result had affected those closest to Bolton.
‘Best news. Thanks for the call. Mum was crying when I told her. She kept saying lotto. Like better than winning the lotto.’
The emotional update came less than two days after Bolton spoke candidly about the surgery that would ultimately deliver the result she had hoped for.
Speaking from recovery, she explained she had undergone a lumpectomy and the removal of several lymph nodes after doctors identified areas they wanted to investigate further.
‘I had a lumpectomy, so at the moment I am still bandaged up, so I haven’t really had a proper look what he has done,’ she said.
‘I ended up with a couple of lymph nodes taken out and that’s actually where the pain is.
Bolton described enduring months of appointments, scans, biopsies, treatment sessions and surgery during her health battle
Saturday’s announcement provided the answer Bolton and her family had been hoping to hear for months
‘I don’t actually have pain [across the chest], it’s under my arm.
‘But it’s really sore and it’s black, it’s bruised, it’s not very pretty, but it is what it is.’
Bolton then detailed the painstaking process doctors used before surgery to determine whether the cancer had spread beyond her breast.
She explained how dye was injected into her body before scans were carried out to identify the first lymph node connected to the breast, allowing surgeons to determine the most likely pathway any cancer cells would have taken.
‘The whole point of this is they want to see which lymph node the boob drains,’ she said.
‘I think you’ve got like 20 lymph nodes under your arm. So they need to find out if there’s any chance that this breast cancer has moved from my breast to a lymph node.’
Before beginning chemotherapy, doctors had already identified one lymph node that concerned them enough to place a marker inside it.
However, further testing before surgery revealed that node was not actually the first drainage point from the breast.
‘The interesting thing was before I had my chemo, they had pinpointed a lymph node that looked angry and they’d put a marker in that,’ Bolton explained.
‘So what they wanted to do was figure out if the one that they’d already marked or the one that they’d already put in the naughty corner was the one that the boob drains to first.
‘And as it turns out, it’s not.’
As a result, surgeons removed the previously marked lymph node, the newly identified sentinel lymph node and additional lymph nodes to ensure they had the clearest possible picture of whether any cancer remained.
‘My surgeon is very thorough, he’s been doing this forever. He’s the best in the biz,’ Bolton said.
‘And obviously he doesn’t want to have to go back in and he wants to get a real pathology result.
‘We wanna have a yes, it’s gone, or no. You don’t want to have any ifs.’
