It should have been the happiest day of my life. But hours after I was told I was getting an OBE, I was diagnosed with BREAST CANCER
THE email arrived at 9.30am shortly before Christmas, while I was still wrapping presents and doing last-minute internet shopping. Claiming to be from the Cabinet Office, it stated that I was to be awarded the OBE in King Charles III’s first New Year’s Honours List.
Thrilling news — if it was true — but I’ve heard so many stories about online scams that I was sceptical.
So I looked up a number for the Cabinet Office and rang them. A lovely lady at the other end confirmed every detail and asked: ‘You will accept it, won’t you?’ To which I replied: ‘Bloody right I will!!!’ And we laughed. The award was particularly special because it was for my cot death campaign of 1991, which I started after one of my five sons died from cot death, and which reduced the rate in Britain from around 2,500 per year to 300 within little more than six months. It is still the proudest achievement of my life — apart from my sons, of course.
So that was lovely and should have put me on a cloud of happiness for weeks. But life has a weird way of slapping you down. I was brought up a Roman Catholic and, no matter how lapsed you might be, you always fear reprisal from on high.
What came next didn’t just bring me back down to Earth, it felt like more like a slow car crash.
It’s the reason I’m returning to breakfast TV today after a fivemonth absence — and it’s been quite a journey.
For, contrary to the persistent rumours on social media, I haven’t been on a world cruise. Though that would have been infinitely preferable.
Instead, straight after my call to the Cabinet Office, I had to leave for an appointment with my local NHS breast clinic at 10.30am.
I’d been to see my GP just a couple of days before about something I thought, aged 68, was an ‘old lady thing’.
I’ve always been breast aware — looking out for lumps and bumps — but this was so subtle and small a change in appearance from the norm, it was a nothing, I thought.
Even before she’d examined me, the GP was adamant she was going to refer me to the local breast clinic. No need for alarm, it’s just what we do, she said.
So after the very uplifting conversation with the Cabinet Office lady, I drove to my local hospital, expecting no more than an examination, maybe a mammogram.
Instead, I was still there at lunchtime, undergoing multiple mammograms, biopsies, CT scans, sonograms and X-rays.
This is the NHS at its best, I thought proudly. I didn’t expect the worst because I believed I was simply getting great precautionary care.
And then came the final meeting with a specialist just before lunchtime. A lunchtime I might have expected to spend celebrating with a few friends.
But with him was a lady with a lanyard around her neck that read — to my silent shock — ‘Macmillan Cancer Care’. The specialist mentioned the C word, but I wasn’t really taking it in. His little speech to me was all white noise. But having a Macmillan nurse there was the first clue that I might really have cancer.
Amanda, thank you. You were the person I needed.
She quickly noticed that I couldn’t take it all in and ushered me to a side room which boasted a sofa instead of office chairs and a mural of trees and butterflies.
She sat me down, and that’s when my heart started to flutter. It was all too calm and serious.
It was indeed cancer, Amanda confirmed quietly and slowly. Two tumours. Thankfully — only stage one and two. Surgery was probably the only answer.
I never in my life thought I would hear those words: You have cancer. Why not? It’s silly I know, given that one in two of us will get it at some point in our lives, but I guess I just assumed it was one of those things that happened to
This was so small a change I’d thought it was nothing
I drove home still not really believing it had happened
other people, younger women. How wrong I was.
‘Do you have anyone at home with you?’ she asked. I lied, ‘yes’. I didn’t. I knew my wonderful sisters, my sons, my best friend would come straight away. But I just wanted to take it in on my own.
I drove home, still not really believing it. It happened to be a nice sunny day, if a bit cold, so I sat in the garden with a coffee.
Nothing felt real, so I decided to not think about it. Just a medical thing I would tackle tomorrow.
I am like that. A procrastinator. Anything I can put off until tomorrow, I will.
So that was my weird day. Family ringing me up to congratulate me on the OBE, not knowing I had more news to tell them. And Christmas only a few days away.
All through Christmas I sat on my secret. How could I tell them while we indulged in pressies and all the trimmings?
It would’ve spoiled everything and, in our family, we put a lot of work into happy Christmases!
You might think it was hell. Actually, it wasn’t. Like I said, I’m pretty good at sticking my head in the sand.
Still I was, in the privacy of my own bedroom, and in front of the wardrobe mirror, practising how to tell my loved ones the news no one wants to hear.
I carefully plotted how I’d tell my sons: ‘Look, I have something to tell you. I have breast cancer BUT it is treatable and I will be all right.’ I knew I’d have to say it in one, complete and determined, sentence. All in one gulp.
In the end, I told my sisters and best friend Shirley first, because they’re women and would know how to strategise. They promised support and the sort of empathy
I told my sisters, then carefully plotted how I’d tell my sons
It’s the only time I’ve ever thought of giving up
that just makes you want to cry all night. And I did.
If any of them had the same news for me, I know I would have lost it.
In fact, Shirley had indeed had to make that same phone call to me 35 years ago, to tell me she had been diagnosed with colon cancer. Best friends since we were about eight, we both wept down the phone to each other.
‘I was convinced I was going to lose her. She, too, thought it was the end.
Ten years later, we celebrated her ‘all clear’ with a small family party on the London Eye, with champagne and canapés.
Forty years later, she is still going strong and is living proof to me that you can survive cancer and have a full life, despite its frightening ever-presence.
After that, I gradually picked off my sons, in no particular order, as I saw them over the next few days. One by one, I watched their faces go white.
But the strength behind my news was belief in the science, and my boys were reassured by the fact that I had already seen one of the top breast cancer surgeons in Britain and we had a ‘treatment plan’.
In fact, Shirley gave me the best advice at this point, that if you tell people your news, you will get their best-intentioned advice, so perhaps don’t listen too much because you will get so many different opinions.
So I pretty much approached cancer like building a business plan and then sticking to it. And I tried not to Google at all. Though my sisters did point me towards a documentary made by the very brave Julia Bradbury about her breast cancer surgery.
I avoided it at first, thinking it might be too much, but later found it brilliantly uplifting — and it told me so many things I wanted to know. Like just how scary it was all going to be…
So my breast cancer had been caught early, the prognosis was good. There would just be difficult days ahead. And my friends and family would need to be my support. Thankfully, they all affirmed that they needed to be needed.
First, I had to have a mastectomy and ‘reconstruction’ in January, which was a nine-hour surgery.
Two weeks later, I was back into theatre for a couple of hours to remove lymph nodes, which may or may not have spread the cancer beyond the breast. Thankfully, it all looks good.
Those two surgeries were a big deal. On the occasions I was able to look at my body, I was shocked by how raw and brutal is the business of surgery. You really look like a piece of meat that’s been stuffed and sewn up like an oven-ready three-bird-roast.
And I simply cannot comprehend the expertise of the surgeons who do this surgery every day. A quarter of all women in the UK get breast cancer — their skills are vital.
While I was in hospital mine popped in nearly every day and told me I was doing well. I just felt like dribbling a mantra: ‘Thank you so much for what you do!’
After I’d recovered from the surgery a month of radiotherapy followed, to ensure all cancer cells have been caught.
I am very thankful that I’ve not needed chemotherapy but perhaps the biggest surprise has been radiotherapy. I’ve been told about people who pop in for their sessions, like going for a lunchtime sandwich, but my experience has been very different.
I’ve found it hardest of all — because it is a relentless process — painless but physically and emotionally taxing.
It’s the only time I have ever seriously thought of giving up and simply telling the doctors: ‘No more . . . I have had enough.’
It’s the only time I broke down in tears in front of the medics trying to help me.
I always thought I was stronger than that. But the daily round of feeling like a piece of meat under a massive radiotherapy machine almost got too much for me.
It’s only thanks to the brilliant specialist cancer and radiography nurses that I made it to the end. Jenny and Mandy, so many thanks and hugs.
I had my last radiotherapy session this week, and all my friends and family texted me, asking if I wanted to celebrate with a boozy lunch, or telling me to go straight back home and have a glass of champagne.
But it’s not like that. I just feel so overwhelmed by it all. The shock diagnosis, the operations, the painkillers, the dressings, the drains (!).
I don’t even feel like a cancer patient yet, it’s all too soon to reflect. I actually wonder if I am still in a state of disbelief at what has happened.
And, of course, it is not over. Lots more appointments, check-ups and I suppose from now on, regular tests, scans and updates.
Will it ever be over? Do you know, once you have suffered a cancer you are always classified as a ‘cancer victim/patient’ on any sort of official medical form?
It defines you from there on, in so many ways — even when you have had the all-clear.
And I am lucky: I am aware that so many women have it so much worse than me.
But as a cancer survivor (I hope), life goes on — and so I am back to work today.
By the way, for those who come out the other side of cancer, it may be harder than you think going back to work.
Yes, you have the right to return to your previous job, but when do you really feel ready?
In my experience, five months is nowhere near enough to take in how cancer can be a hammer blow to your life.
But few people have the financial resources to take years off to recuperate and I will be glad to get back to normality and a routine, even if it includes getting up at 3am to present weekend Breakfast With Stephen And Anne on GB News.
As I write this, there are headlines about a new blood test that may be able to detect cancer even before symptoms emerge.
It is a terrifying diagnosis. The saving grace for me was that mine was caught early and was treatable. If and when I ever get back the energy to campaign again, that will be the one message I will hammer home — go to the doctor with the slightest worry or symptom.
Unlike back in 1991, when the message I had to deliver in my cot death campaign — to put babies to sleep on their backs — was new research, this is not new, it just needs more emphasis.
Listen to what the experts are already telling us, act fast and catch it early if you can.
Get a leaflet about breast cancer symptoms — yours could be, like mine, so small and insignificant you might not realise it is a symptom.
At least, after such a tough few months, I know I’ve got something to look forward to.
I missed my OBE investiture in March (a shame as it turned out to be star-studded!)
But the lady from the Cabinet Office has promised I’ll get my moment in the next few months. It’ll be worth waiting for.