Tragic Sarah helped me spot cancer early
‘I TRULY BELIEVE SINGER’S AGONY SAVED MY LIFE’
A GIRLS Aloud fan says tragic singer Sarah Harding saved her life.
Moved by the star’s death from breast cancer, Lucy Morgan checked herself out.
She found a small, hard growth in her right breast less than two weeks after the singer died. Mum-of-two Lucy, 37, was then diagnosed with breast cancer. But after surgery and chemotherapy, the outlook is good.
She said: “I truly believe Sarah Harding saved my life.
“I was young, fit and healthy and I have no history of breast cancer in my family.
“I would never have checked myself if it wasn’t for her, but thank God I did.”
Lucy, who has children Eva, 14, and Charlie, 11, with husband Rob, 38, was getting ready for bed at home when she decided to check her breasts.
She said: “I’d always been a fan so it really hit me when Sarah died.
“At 39 she was only a couple of years older than me and I realised then cancer can affect anybody.
“I’d never checked my breasts before, I didn’t think I needed to, but I decided to that Saturday night. As I pressed my palm against my right breast I felt a definite, hard lump.
“It didn’t hurt but it felt alien and when I showed Rob he said he could see it coming through my skin.” On the Monday morning, Lucy went to her GP.
She said: “I had to wait over three weeks for the results and it was agonising.
“When I asked doctors why it was taking so long, they said they’d had an influx of women coming in for tests after Sarah Harding died.”
Lucy’s first biopsy came back clear. But medics had identified pre-cancerous cells and sent her for a more invasive biopsy, inset. Ten days later, Lucy received a phone call. She said: “They’d found cancer. It was Grade 2 invasive ductal carcinoma. I was devastated.”
Two weeks later, in November
2021, Lucy had a lumpectomy.
She said: “A previous MRI scan had suggested the tumour was
13mm but it turned out it was over twice the predicted size, at 29mm.
“They’d also found cancer in a lymph node. It meant I needed chemotherapy.”
Lucy, from Leicester, has had two of six sessions of chemotherapy. She will need further radiotherapy and hormone treatment for 10 years but her prognosis is good.
She said: “The cancer is gone, my treatment now is all about preventing it from coming back.
“God knows what would have happened if I’d left it any longer.
“I have Sarah Harding to thank for that.”