A 36-year-old woman who had “warning dreams” as a child that she was going to get cancer has been diagnosed for a second time just weeks before she was due to celebrate being cured. Abi Galatia was diagnosed with breast cancer after winning her decade-long battle with a “very aggressive” and rare type of bone cancer during which she underwent 68 rounds of chemotherapy.
But while cancer may come as a shock to many people, on both occasions, Abi, who lives in Bristol, says she had dreams forewarning her diagnosis and the “dark times” which were to come. The same happened before her mum was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2010, says Abi, who now gets “really upset” whenever she gets a bad feeling about someone.
While Abi claims to have “always known” that she was going to beat the first cancer, the trauma has left her with a “bad feeling” about her recent diagnosis and the side effects of starting chemotherapy again, which could leave her infertile. “It has been relentless and it feels like there’s a curse over my life, I just need a break,” she said.
“I can just tap into stuff – I’m not a psychic, I’m not a witch, I don’t what the hell it is. All I know is, now when I get a gut instinct about people, that they’re going to get sick, I just pray against it.”
Abi, who has been forced to put her photography career on hold, says she has been able to sense when something bad is about to happen ever since she was a little girl. “I was 12 to 13 when they started,” she said.
“My friends thought I was mental because they would come over for sleepovers and I would wake up in the middle of the night crying my eyes out, being like my mum is going to get cancer and she’s going to die.” Her mother sadly died in 2010, just a few months after being diagnosed with stomach and lung cancer.
“When my mum was having tests and everything, I came down from London to nurse her,” she said. "I just knew that the dreams I had before were becoming a reality – it was just awful. But on the bright side, it meant that we were able to spend more time together.”
The “terrifying warnings” were not only about her mother however. "I would get them about me as well, but the ones about me, I knew I wasn’t going to die from it, that I would be healed but it was going to be torturous,” she said.
Three years after losing her mother, Abi was diagnosed with an aggressive type of bone cancer called osteosarcoma, which most often affects teenagers and young adults.
“It’s one of the most aggressive forms of cancer and they have to hit it like wildfire,” she said. “I did 68 rounds of chemo and six surgeries and if it had spread to other parts of my body, I would basically be doomed.”
The intense treatment almost broke Abi, who suffered heart problems and was later diagnosed with PTSD. Despite this, Abi pulled through and was looking forward to getting her life back on track, having met someone, Carlos Berry, 41, and decided to move house.
“I was in a difficult place because I had just come out of a sling and was looking at different career options,” she said. “Travelling has always been a huge thing for me and I was looking into living abroad.”
But when earlier this year Abi had another “warning dream” and could feel a lump in her breast, an alarm bell went off in her head and she immediately went to see the doctor. “I’ve known for the past 10 years that it was going to come but I didn’t find the lump in my breast until I had the warning dream, which was around the end of March,” she said.
“I felt it and burst out crying because I knew what it meant.” Doctors reassured Abi there was a high chance the lump was benign and could simply be linked to stress, but Abi was not convinced.
In April 2023, she was diagnosed with stage 2, grade 3 triple negative breast cancer just weeks before she was planning to hold an “all clear from cancer celebration”, and has now begun another round of chemotherapy. Sadly, the treatment has taken a heavy toll on Abi’s body and there is a high chance, after this round of chemo, that she will not be able to have children.
“Words can’t even describe what actually happened and where my head went,” she said. Abi’s friends set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for fertility treatment which can cost upwards of £5,000 as well as pay for therapies to help alleviate the “emotional and physical burden”.
To view Abi’s photography on Instagram, visit instagram.com/iamabigalatia.
