Why I live for now after losing mum to cancer
After the trauma of losing her beloved mother Cath to breast cancer, the actress tells JANE SYMONS why she’s determined to live life to the full and help fight the disease
LISA RILEY is sitting in the back of a cab, dressed head-to-toe in pink and garlanded in a froth of pink feather boas. An ambassador for Breast Cancer Now, she twirls the charity’s signature colour around her neck as she talks candidly about the disease that robbed her of her beloved mum Cath six years ago.
“I know there is a strong chance I will become a statistic,” says Lisa, 42. “I lost my mum, the love of my life, to breast cancer and I have lost five members of my family to cancer. I’m a clever girl, I know what the statistics say – so I’ll live for now.”
Cath was diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer 12 years earlier but sadly it returned and spread to her pancreas.
Former Emmerdale star Lisa, who is now a regular on Loose Women, admits there isn’t a day that goes by when she doesn’t think of her mum.
“She was never a pushy mum, she was always my rock, my support. It’s still hard to think she is not there any more,” she says.
“Whenever I see yellow, I think of her. Yellow is my mum. Her zest for life was her legacy. People used to say, ‘Cath Riley, once met never forgotten’.” It’s a phrase that is also very true of Lisa, and she admits: “When someone says that, it’s the best compliment anyone could ever give me.”
She says she takes each memory of her mum as a reminder that Cath is still by her side. “She is with me, that’s the way I can turn something sad into something positive,” she says.
That is also why Lisa is so passionate about raising awareness of the disease and championing Breast Cancer Now, the UK’s largest charity of its type – although she admits she is not always a fan of celebrities getting involved.
“There’s nothing worse than seeing people attach themselves to a cause when they have no real connection to it,” says Lisa.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK. Nearly 700,000 people living in the UK have experienced a diagnosis and one in eight women will face it in their lifetime. This year alone, 55,000 women and 350 men will be told they have the disease.
THE UK still has one of the lowest breast cancer survival rates in Western Europe and this year it’s estimated that 11,500 women will lose their lives. But earlier diagnosis, improved surgical procedures, better radiotherapy and new targeted drugs mean that four out of five women diagnosed with breast cancer now live for 10 years or more.
Lisa knows what a difference early detection can make, because it was her insistence that her mother have a check-up which gave Cath another three or four years of life.
She explains: “I was staying at home at the time as I was filming in Manchester. One day mum came out of the shower and her towel dropped. There was an area around the areola that looked as if it was burnt.
“When I said she should see the doctor, mum said it was nothing, and that’s obviously what she had been telling herself. That was the Friday evening and by Monday she was with a specialist who diagnosed stage-four cancer and confirmed it was in her lymph nodes.”
Cath had a full mastectomy followed by a course of radiotherapy, chemotherapy and the hormonal therapy tamoxifen. She “responded brilliantly” and she lived for more than a decade before her death in 2012.
Lisa says: “It’s so important to get any change in your breasts checked out. Breast cancer is not always a lump, sometimes it looks dimpled like cellulite, or in my mum’s case like a burn. If you notice anything unusual, ring the GP. Don’t think that you’re wasting their time, that’s what they are there for.”
There is also a lot we can do when it comes to our lifestyles to reduce our odds of developing cancer and Lisa has eliminated two of the biggest risk factors – alcohol and obesity.
“My dad says I have gained the years that mum lost. I love that, and the thought of how bloody proud she would be drives me forward,” says Lisa.
Once the self-confessed Queen Of Malbec, Lisa admits she was in complete denial about her weight. “When I was out with girlfriends I’d wonder why they were a size 12 and I was a 28. But I’d be tucking into garlic bread, pasta, tiramisu and glasses of red wine and they ordered a salad. It’s not rocket science.”
She had tried dieting and diet clubs many times before but says she always found ways to lie to herself about how much she was eating.
But in 2015 Lisa decided to try again, this time for her health. After cutting out booze, changing her diet and taking up Zumba and weight training, she lost half her body weight – 12 stone – in 18 months.
Lisa’s weight loss was so dramatic she had to have two operations to remove excess skin.
Now she works out twice a day, starts the day with porridge and sticks to low-calorie meals built around lean protein and vegetables.
But she says: “Not one day goes by that I am not accused of having a gastric band. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against them but I have done this by myself.” The taunts from cyber bullies made her so angry that she took a lie detector test live on Loose Women.
Now she shrugs them off, saying: “I know the truth and the people I care about know the truth.”
And if an unflattering paparazzi photo appears on social media she doesn’t care. “I’m human,” she says.
Having previously said she would never have children, last year Lisa decided to try for a family after meeting her “soulmate” Al, a musician who shuns the limelight.
Yet after a year on hormones to stimulate her fertility, doctors told her she was unlikely to conceive.
Now Lisa says: “I’m fine with it. The second I made the decision to stop it was like a new lease of life.” On October 19 Lisa will be wearing her pink feather boa as part of Breast Cancer Now’s wear it pink campaign. The charity is encouraging the nation to wear pink to raise funding and awareness of the disease.
“I will be wearing pink for my beautiful mum,” says Lisa.
“I want to help raise vital funds for Breast Cancer Now’s research so that together, we can all help to achieve a future where everyone who develops breast cancer will live and live well.”
To take part in wear it pink this October, go to wearitpink.org for fundraising ideas and to register for your free fundraising pack.