They say 40 is the new 30, and that’s exactly how I felt in July 2022. Just before my 40th birthday, my career as a university lecturer was flourishing, with successful grant applications and publications. My partner was about to start a new job closer to home, and my daughters were thriving at school and nursery. We had even booked our first island holiday!

Little did I know that the outcome of an early screening mammogram, initially scheduled for my birthday and postponed by a week, would change my life forever. Within a week, I was called back for an urgent ultrasound of my breast and armpit. Just a week later, I learned not only that I had breast cancer, but that it was an aggressive form.

Every ten minutes, a woman in the UK receives a breast cancer diagnosis. This time, it was me. My diagnosis required the full course of treatment – chemotherapy, a mastectomy, and radiotherapy. “At least a year,” said the oncologist, “and then you’ll be menopausal to reduce the risk of recurrence.”

I was shocked but determined to fight back, to remain Mariachiara – the woman, the wife, the mother, the friend, and the academic – after my treatments. This thought guided me through the many ups and downs of the process, as did the support of my family, friends, and colleagues at the University of Sussex.

My response to the treatments was very positive, and here I am, now ‘four-plus-two’, as I like to say when people ask my age, back to family life and back to work. I am among the increasing number of women for whom a breast cancer diagnosis can lead to a new lease on life. Medical advances in screening and treatments now allow almost nine in ten women diagnosed with breast cancer to survive for five years or more.

Life after cancer is a ‘new normal’, where I must balance medical appointments and check-ups with my work and family life, all while the thought of recurrence lingers. This ‘new normal’ includes navigating menopause much earlier than most women, as a result of my treatment. It’s a new normal because this experience has changed how I see both life and my work.

In the past, I often felt apologetic for being a marketing lecturer, because ‘marketing manipulates people.’ But as a vulnerable patient moving from one waiting room to another, I realised that marketing can be a force for good – if it helps place the individual at the centre of any product or service offering, especially in healthcare.

I realised I was a marketer at heart throughout my treatments, whenever I identified unmet patient needs in healthcare settings, whenever I felt that communication between healthcare providers and patients could be improved, or whenever I encountered misleading social media posts promoting unconventional therapies as miracle cures for cancer. I also saw, firsthand, the invaluable support offered by online communities of patients who, like me, experienced both cancer and menopause. These observations took many forms – notes in my diary, pictures on my phone, emails to healthcare providers and charities like Macmillan and Against Breast Cancer.

I clung to these thoughts as I prepared to return to work at the institution that had treated me not just as an employee but as a human being throughout this journey. With renewed determination, I followed the advice from my compassionate occupational health assessment and managed to return to work just over a year after that mammogram. I am now using my marketing skills in new ways. Alongside my ‘traditional’ (pre-cancer) projects on business-to-business marketing and innovation management, I am transforming those notes into new projects with colleagues to better understand the challenges breast cancer patients face during treatment. If these projects can help even one person, my suffering will not have been in vain.

I am now adding my voice to those advocating for a more holistic approach to cancer survivorship – one that considers the impact of treatments on our daily lives, both at home and at work, particularly when the menopause comes earlier and more intensely due to cancer treatments.

To borrow from Adele’s lyrics: we want to live, not just survive, after breast cancer!

Mariachiara Restuccia is a marketing researcher, educator, and freelance consultant passionate at the University of Sussex Business School.