My daughter Evie, 6: Do lots of mummies get cancer? Me: Only some Evie: Will I?
SIAN WILLIAMS’ SEARING BREAST CANCER DIARIES IN TODAY’S YOU MAGAZINE
NEWSREADER Sian Williams walks gingerly to her bathroom after a restless night of crying. Overwhelmed by being at home after a shockingly sudden double mastectomy and terrified her cancer will return, she steels herself to look in the mirror.
‘I get undressed in the bathroom and see puckered gashes and tubes leaking blood coming out from under my armpits,’ she later writes in her diary. ‘I do not recognise myself. I feel bruised beyond repair. Brittle, contorted, punched, ugly, old, damaged, diseased, thin, bloated, alien.’
Sian, who presented BBC Breakfast for 11 years and now anchors Channel 5 News, was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly before her 50th birthday in 2014, and just before she was due to move house. She went to great lengths to keep her cancer secret from her BBC bosses, telling only her closest relatives and her children’s teacher.
Instead, she committed her innermost fears to her diary. Today The Mail on Sunday’s You Magazine publishes exclusive extracts of her searingly honest and deeply personal account, in which Sian describes how the trauma of her diagnosis and the subsequent surgical removal of both her breasts propelled her into a world of ‘fear and rage’ and forced her to reassess her life, her work and her relationships.
Few families in Britain have escaped the scourge of cancer, but Sian, like many who have suffered from the disease, struggled to make sense of the diagnosis, particularly as she has always looked after her health. ‘Disease suddenly pitched me into a hospital theatre where two surgeons took away my breasts, along with my naive belief in healthy infallibility,’ she explains.
Then, as is common, the fear set in. Sian, 51, has lost close family members to cancer, and became terrified of not being around to see her four children grow up. ‘My aunt and one of my closest friends died early from breast cancer,’ she says, adding: ‘My mum didn’t survive the disease either. I consider myself extremely lucky that mine was spotted early and dealt with promptly.’
The outlet for all her fear, pain and gut-churning worry was her diary. ‘I began writing. Not for me or anyone else to read, but to maintain sanity. My diaries were where I could scream or laugh or simply observe.’
Now she is publishing her diary, along with a toolkit of psychological advice and practical guidance born of her experience, which she hopes will help others through a similarly tough time. ‘I want to show it’s OK to have fear, bewilderment and rage when life challenges you. In fact, more than OK – it’s an important part of recowvering,’ she says.
In that spirit of honesty, she admits her fear that going public would make her an object of pity: ‘I’m frightened of you reading it. Ever since my diagnosis I’ve been wary of anyone knowing. Very few people were told. I wanted to protect my family. So we turned in, rather than out.’
Of all the excruciating tasks thrust upon her, telling her children was the worst. Sian recalls being uncertain how to respond when her six-yearold daughter Evie asked: ‘Do lots of mummies get cancer?’ Touchingly, she remembers her youngest child’s face being ‘open and interested, quizzical rather than concerned’, before she replied: ‘No, but some do and everyone is doing their best to get rid of it for them.’ ‘Will I get it?’ Evie responded, heartbreakingly.
Sian adds: ‘I want them to know that cancer isn’t always a death sentence, like it was for their granny. I want them to know that you can have cancer and still be you, even when a part of you has been taken away. I want them to understand that hospitals are not full of fear, but packed with people who work their hardest to make you better and you can trust them, sometimes even laugh with them. That it’ll be OK.’
It was an outward confidence that masked a gnawing inner fear. The everyday business of motherhood is hard for cancer sufferers. A particular wrench, Sian says, were the landmarks she missed while in hospital in January 2015.
‘The kids [Evie and eight-year-old Seth] start a new school today and I’m not even there to hold their hands, hug them, reassure them and wave them off. It’s gutting,’ she confides in her diary. ‘Seth said he’s “really nervous and shy”. Evie is excited, she’s fine. I can’t wait to see them bound into school, buoyed by the new friendships they’ve made and experiences they’ve had.’
She adds: ‘I have pretty astounding children. Joss and Al [Sian’s 15 and 12-year-old sons from her first marriage] were here all day yesterday, chatting, reading, checking their phones, eating the fruit.’
Sian is a trained trauma assessor, skilled in helping journalist colleagues deal with the impact of covering harrowing news events. Shortly before her diagnosis in November 2013, she had just completed a two-year MSc in psychology, focused on growth after adversity. But no amount of study could prepare her for the life-changing events ahead of her.
In the early stages of recovery she slept badly and cried late into the night. ‘I was overwhelmed by being out of hospital, frightened of the future,’ she recalls, before explaining that her husband Paul proved a reassuring presence through it all.
‘While I was surviving he was watching and feeling – what? Impotence? Anger? Fear? My emotions focused on getting through, small steps towards recovery, raising a cup to my lips, hiding the bottles that drained the blood from my wounds. It’s like being in a bubble where all your energy is directed back upon yourself; you’re clutching tiny victories as proof you can build back up, grow stronger.
‘The shock of it mentally is outside that bubble, suffered by others, looking in at you struggling to do the things that a small child could do,
‘Evie starts school today and I’m not there to hold her hand’
‘How easy will it be to put the mask back on?’
yet unable to help.’ A month after surgery, her emotions still swirled erratically. ‘I cried in front of a psychologist and talked tough to a business colleague. I tell myself I am strong, yet I am vulnerable and weak. The trouble with appearing capable is that people assume you don’t need help, so don’t offer. I’m healed, aren’t I? I’m lucky and I certainly look the same – clothed, at least.
‘So why do I feel so lost and angry? Certainly more emotional and experiencing this intense sadness, which comes in unexplained, unbidden. Weaker, easier to knock off balance, confused.’
Her battle with the disease was, Sian says, an intense learning experience: ‘I’m seeing a psychologist who specialises in breast cancer care. When we talk, I cry – about past traumas, my mother’s fast, undiagnosed cancer, which killed her within four months. Giving birth to a blue, flat baby and then losing more than half my blood – being told that we almost lost our son, before almost losing my life too.
‘Talking to her, I realise that in our family we suppress emotion and get on with things. Pull your socks up, pick yourself up. The morning after my mother’s death, my dad, my brothers and I had organised the funeral and taken all her clothes to the charity shop in black bin bags by midday. I’m not used to indulging in emotion, and no one expects it of me.’
Even after the operation was declared a success, Sian struggled to reconcile herself – and her public persona – to the illness.
A fortnight after surgery, she recalls, she stood with her husband looking out to sea, and said, ‘“Sian Williams has had a double mastectomy. That statement seems too incongruous to belong to me. Does it sound weird to you?” He looks at me and seems tired, worn, resigned. It’s not weird to him because he lived it.’
Sian returned to work six weeks after her surgery, presenting the BBC One O’Clock News on February 20, 2015. Television is an unforgiving medium, and she spent a restless night worrying about going back.
‘Work dreams are back. Sweating about being in the wrong place at 12.30pm, not being able to find a jacket or an earpiece. Looking ghastly and irrevocably tired, old, shabby, the hair thin and flyaway brittle, the eyes yellow… Ouch. Judgment. How easy will it be to put the mask back on?’
After a battle to return to some semblance of normality, however, Sian is now prepared to release the most intimate details of her personal struggle back to health.
It’s now been more than a year since Sian’s double mastectomy. ‘I’ve been back to get new lumps examined and had more reconstructive surgery but I’m healthy. From the start, I was told my cancer was “breast-threatening, not life-threatening”. That’s a very different place to many people.’
She admits that she planned to keep her cancer secret ‘as I’ve always been a private person’, but says the experience transformed her outlook on life – which spurred her into sharing what she learned by publishing her diaries.
‘The positive discoveries seem too valuable not to share. It’s not an easy path – it’s painful and hard-fought. You still have to deal with normality: squabbling kids, upsets at work, irritations at home. Nothing has changed – and yet everything has. I would not wish it on anyone but, in a strange way, taking away my breasts, my self-esteem and my belief in certainty gave me something back: a fresh perspective on the way I embrace life and those I love. And for that, I’m thankful.’