The write stuff – new friends fight cancer together
IT IS a friendship forged in the worst possible circumstances.
For although these two young women might at first glance seem to be in their prime both have incurable cancer.
Laura Middleton- Hughes and Nicky Newman have painted their bodies with words that characterise their battle with the disease, including ‘pain’, ‘fatigue’ and ‘stage 4’.
They have posed for this striking photograph to support Stand Up To Cancer, a joint campaign by Cancer Research UK and Channel 4 to raise funds for research.
The women, both 31, met through an online cancer community and they have now set up their own online support group called Secondary Sisters to ‘offer information, hope and basically a bit of fun’ for women with
‘Our focus is on living your life’
the disease. Both have been robbed of their chance to have children and suffer daily fatigue and pain.
Mrs Newman, from Guildford, Surrey, said: ‘There are tough times, of course, and we don’t shy away from that. But our focus is on living your life and living it well.’
She discovered she had incurable breast cancer last year after finding a lump in her right breast. Her cancer is currently stable.
Mrs Middleton-Hughes, from Norwich, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 after finding a lump in her left breast. She underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy and recovered, but began to feel pain in her right shoulder in 2016.
A scan revealed the cancer had spread and she had to undergo a shoulder replacement. Her disease is also currently stable.