Profile: Lyn Swinburne

A battle with breast cancer led to a dedication to helping others with the disease.

This year, about 14,000 Australian women will be told they have breast cancer, making it the most common type of female cancer. Yet when Lyn Swinburne received the dreaded news, there was little information or support for sufferers.

''When I was diagnosed, it was very much a whispered disease,'' says Swinburne, 58, the founder and chief executive of Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA). ''That mindset has now completely changed.''

Swinburne has played a big role in that change. After her diagnosis, in 1993, followed by a roller-coaster year of surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and hormone therapy, she was determined to ensure other women had a better experience than she did.

''I wanted to put the woman back in the picture, rather than the tumour,'' she says.

In 1998 she marked the formal launch of BCNA by planting 10,000 pink cardboard silhouettes of women outside Parliament House in Canberra and inviting those affected by breast cancer to write a message on one.

That ''field of women'' initiative has since been taken live, with more than 10,000 people dressed in pink ponchos at Melbourne's MCG in 2005 and this year and in Sydney in 2007.

BCNA's other major awareness and fund-raising event is an annual ''pink bun'' day, through Bakers Delight bakeries, which donate all the proceeds from the sale of pink buns for three weeks.

Swinburne says the support of the bakery chain has been crucial. The chain's owners approached her in 1999, when BCNA consisted of Swinburne and one helper, and offered her an office in their new headquarters in Melbourne.

''It was like someone waved a magic wand and we had office space, computers, furniture, access to their printers and other supplies,'' she says.

A decade later, BCNA has 30 staff, plus many more volunteers - and a whole floor of the bakery's office space. It has more than 50,000 members and an annual budget of about $5 million.

While the organisation offers support and information to breast-cancer sufferers and their families, Swinburne says its main role is as an advocate, to help doctors and politicians understand what women go through and improve their approach.

Her own experience, at age 40, is a case in point. She was given the diagnosis over the phone by her doctor's secretary, who then booked her in for blood tests, bone-scan tests and surgery.

''The message I heard was 'I've got breast cancer and they think it's spread everywhere','' Swinburne says. ''My immediate fear was that my children [then aged six and eight] would grow up without a mother.''

During the next year, on the treadmill of hospital stays, doctors' appointments and medical tests, she suspects she was depressed. But there was scant information and no counselling.

Once her treatment was finished, she returned to her original vocation as a primary school teacher but only lasted a few months before realising her passion had shifted to breast-cancer advocacy.

''My life's completely changed. I fit more in a day now than I ever would have contemplated before. I've found strengths and skills have emerged that I would never have thought about before.''

See bcna.org.au.

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Biggest break A chance re-meeting in 1999 with Roger and Lesley Gillespie, the founders of Bakers Delight. I had a vision for Breast Cancer Network Australia and loads of passion but no money. They asked: ''How can we help?''

Biggest achievement The achievement is shared with many others but it's observing improvements in the management and care of women with breast cancer. It's certainly not perfect but it is so much better these days.

Biggest regret Continuing to lose fabulous women to this disease [each year more than 2600 Australian women die from breast cancer].

Best investment Training women through BCNA's Seat at the Table program, to ensure the next brigade of advocates can keep positively influencing the system.

Worst investment My husband, Tom, and I sold our first house in 1984, when we needn't have. It was a two-storey terrace in Richmond [in Melbourne's inner east]. It's worth a fortune now.

Attitude to money Personally not very interested. For BCNA, the more we raise, the more we can achieve.

Personal philosophy Life is precious - be a doer, not a watcher.