This time, she was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer - a type of breast cancer that doesn’t respond to normal hormonal cancer treatments. With no cure and very few treatment options, Barson decided in November 2022 to “do life – without the side effects of chemo that crippled me last time”.
Choosing to focus on the time she has left with her 13-year-old daughter, the GP surgery assistant practitioner has spent the last year embracing her remaining time on earth. She’s enjoyed a trip to Disneyland Paris, skydived and even completed a difficult charity mud-run weeks after suffering a collapsed lung.
“I wasn’t letting my sponsors down, so I did it,” she told the UK news outlet. “I’ve never been more proud of myself. Admittedly I walked, but I attempted each and every obstacle – as I always do in life. Freya and seven of my friends and family joined me, and it was one of the funniest days I’d had in a long time.”
Now, with mere weeks, if not days to live, Barson has entered hospice care and spoke to The Mail on Sunday explaining her choice not to receive treatment, “When I was on chemo, I was so unwell and I wasn’t myself at all.
“Freya would say to me, “You don’t look or smell like my mummy.” I didn’t want my daughter’s lasting memory of me to be of someone she didn’t recognise,” she said adding, “When you’re diagnosed you feel like you have to do what you’re told to. But you will know what is right for your family, and I knew this was the right decision.”
She said she wanted to be able to “live while I was well” and do things that treatment wouldn’t allow her to do.
Since making the brave choice, she has ticked off a huge chunk of her bucket list and found strength to plan for the future which has included writing cards for “important dates or important things in Freya’s life,” such as her milestone birthdays, first baby, wedding and other monumental events.
She’s also taken part in a new YouTube film from the charity Breast Cancer Now. Titled, Stories Of Secondary, the documentary aims to confront the truth of living with secondary breast cancer.
Another way Barson has helped her family prepare for her ultimate passing is by planning her funeral, “Planning my own funeral was hard but it was also therapeutic. It meant that I was taking the pressure off my family.”
Despite not being able to be there for her family and especially her daughter physically in years to come, Barson told the news outlet she plans to at least be there for them symbolically.
Choosing to be cremated, she has decided her ashes will be placed into a firework that will be let off in the sky, so Freya and her family know “i’m in the sky - wherever she is in the world”.
“She can travel the world because I am wherever she wants me to be. Everywhere has fireworks, so I want her to see fireworks and think of her mum,” Barson said adding, “You can’t cry if you’re looking at the sky. It’s beautiful.”
