‘I live for the moment and I remind myself the past is gone’
As she calls for more mobile screening units, actress Amanda Mealing reflects on her own breast cancer battle
More than 20 years may have passed since her cancer diagnosis, but TV star Amanda Mealing tells us that it feels like no time at all. “Life happens,” says the 56-year-old former Holby City and Casualty actress, when we meet for our exclusive chat. “It’s a journey and only you go through it. You can have all the love and support around you but you’re the only person that travels with it.”
Amanda was only 34 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer – just 24 hours after giving birth to her second son, Otis. Looking back, she still can’t believe how it happened.
“It was shocking. I’d always bought my pink ribbon in October but never thought about what that would entail,” she says. “I’d just given birth – my hormones and emotions were all over the place.”
Looking back, she tells us it was “literally like the world stopped” as she listened to the consultant’s words. “I was in a bubble afterwards,” she reveals. “I could see and faintly hear other people around me. I was thinking, ‘How are you carrying on?’
“It’s a bizarre thing, but I’m a fighter. I also had a newborn and a three-year-old. I thought, ‘You are not taking me now.’”
It was thanks to Amanda’s father-in-law that her condition was investigated so quickly. The retired GP examined her when she complained of what she thought was a blocked milk duct during the latter stages of her pregnancy.
“I happened to feel my breast and there was this huge, matted knot. I thought, ‘This isn’t right,’” she tells us. “He examined me and said it was nothing to worry about – what I didn’t realise is that he was protecting me from the horrifying truth. He later said the worst thing you can do to a heavily pregnant woman is scare her.”
Pregnancy, coupled with being a busy mum to her first son, Milo, now 24, meant she had overlooked the first signs. “I thought doctors would think I was some hysterical pregnant woman, so I did nothing,” she adds.
As soon as baby Otis was born, consultants checked Amanda, all while she nursed him. Within 24 hours, she’d undergone tests and a biopsy.
“I knew looking at the ultrasound that it wasn’t right,” she recalls. “I was expecting the worst.”
Less than two weeks later she’d had chemotherapy and a mastectomy, but she tells us that her focus was on not frightening Milo, then three.
“By my third round of chemo, my hair started falling out and I didn’t want to scare him, so I made a game of ‘shaving Mama’s hair’ so he was in on the joke,” she tells us. “You’re going through all this and still your biggest fear is that you worry your child.”
Amanda admits that losing her hair became a poignant turning point during her journey. “People treat you like a normal human being at first, but as soon as you lose your hair, that changes,” she says. “All I wanted was to be spoken to and treated the same as before, because otherwise it reinforces the fact that you’re ill. You don’t need to be reminded.”
While dealing with her own struggles, she discovered that a close friend had breast cancer, and then a few months later, there was shocking news that her sister-in-law had also been diagnosed. Their subsequent deaths had a profound effect on Amanda’s mental wellbeing. “There’s always survivor’s guilt. They both had lumpectomies. Their tumours were smaller than mine,” Amanda says. “Of the three of us, I’m the one that shouldn’t be here.”
Amanda suffered another devastating personal loss earlier this year when her close friend Paul O’grady sadly passed away. The TV host was godfather to her two sons and, she tells us, “The gatekeeper of my secrets. There was nothing Paul didn’t know – the deepest, darkest secrets about me, and he wouldn’t tell anyone else. I knew I wouldn’t get any kind of judgement from him. “I knew if I said, ‘Oh, this happened or that happened,’ he’d just say, ‘Well, kid, you’re lucky, because when I did…’ and he’d come up with something worse to make me feel better. I still go to call him. Something funny or infuriating will happen, and I reach for my phone. “Thanks to Paul, what I do have now is a beautiful dog in his memory. At the funeral, which was only at a small village churchyard, he had a doggy guard of honour. I saw the last dog in the line of five and thought, ‘Oh, I need to have him.’ Then Ronnie Wood walked past and said, ‘She’s gotta have him, give the dog to her.’”
Rufus Elvis O’grady is perfectly named. Elvis Presley’s (If You’re Looking For) Trouble was played as mourners left Paul’s funeral service and was also a regular showstopper for his alter ego, Lily Savage.
‘You’re going through all of this and still your biggest fear is that you worry your child’