'I beat breast cancer – and now I can see my trees grow'

When the breast cancer treatment was at its most ravaging, Heather Robinson thought she wouldn't see her 50th birthday.

But having been given the all-clear five years on from her diagnosis, she and her husband, Sir Gerry Robinson (64), are preparing to celebrate the occasion with a trip to Verona to see La Traviata followed by a holiday in Sicily.

"It is a big milestone and, yes, there were times I thought I wouldn't make it," admitted Heather at the couple's luxury Georgian home, Oakfield Park near Raphoe, Co Donegal.

It has been a rollercoaster journey since Heather was first diagnosed during what had become a routine annual mammography in London.

"There's that dreadful moment when you know from the face of the woman doing the ultrasound that it's not quite so straightforward. They said they'd found something and that they'd like to take a quick flesh biopsy and they did and sent it off for analysis," she said.

Heather saw a consultant there and then and her worst fears were confirmed.

Gerry, the Donegal-born businessman who has headed up some of the largest companies in the UK, was about to deliver a speech in the Grosvenor House Hotel when Heather called him.

"It was like the bottom had fallen out of my world. The first thing is you panic. So I went out on the stage with all this stuff bouncing around in my head and then got back to Heather as quickly as I could," he recalled.

There was more shock in store days later when they learned that Heather was suffering from the more aggressive HER2-positive Grade 3 form of the disease.

With no time to waste, Heather underwent surgery but a low white blood-cell count meant her ability to tolerate the subsequent harsh regime of chemotherapy sessions was seriously compromised.

By this point they had returned home to their rural idyll and to their teenage son and daughter, Tim and April. Gerry also has an older son and daughter and two grandchildren.

From early on, they decided to protect the younger two from knowing every high and low along the way. They named the treatment day, Grumpy Tuesday, because of the toll it was taking on Heather.

Gerry and other friends would accompany her to Letterkenny General Hospital for the chemotherapy sessions, which often couldn't happen because of her low white cell count.

"It kind of takes over your life. It was the uncertainty was the killer. You go along expecting to get treatment, then blood counts don't come up to match and then you are in this horrible place," said Gerry.

For a man who once took on the challenge of making the NHS run more efficiently, not being in control was the most terrifying aspect of all.

"Obviously the person you love is at risk of dying. You cannot predict it. You don't know where it's going. At one stage we became quite convinced that this thing is bloody not going to work because the treatment wasn't happening," he said.