Friends and family are rallying around a city mum and community leader who has been told she has less than a year to live. Irina Buchan, 36, is doing everything she can to pull through her earth-shattering prognosis, including surgeries, chemotherapy and private treatments. But saving her life is coming at a cost, prompting colleagues and friends to launch a fundraiser at a local Zumba dance fitness club where she is an instructor.
Irina's battle began last October when she was struck down suddenly with acute abdominal pain and underwent an emergency keyhole surgery which found a clot in her lung. The mum of one was bedbound with an infection for nearly a month and in November her "world darkened" when she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. "The kick in the teeth is that it happened as we were celebrating my daughter's second birthday," said Irina, who lives in Norwich with her partner James and daughter Rose.
"It came as such a shock as this should not be happening to a person my age." A week later, as Irina's pain worsened, she was told the cancer had spread to her ovaries and produced metastatic tumours in other parts of her body, developing into stage four cancer. She continued: "In late November I had a surgery planned but once the doctors went in they found it was far worse than expected from the scans.
Irina was admitted to hospital last autumn with acute abdominal pain (Image: Irina Buchan) "But they still took out my ovaries, fallopian tubes, the colon tumour and .