Wearing her cancer scars with pride, 21-year-old model of courage
SHE bears the scars of two vicious battles with cancer, yet Emily Findlay refuses to feel embarrassed – and proudly reveals a body marked by years of gruelling treatment as she models for a new lingerie campaign.
At 21, Miss Findlay has already been through emergency spinal surgery, stem cell procedures, high-dose chemotherapy and radiotherapy – and lost her hair during her final years of secondary school.
But instead of hiding the scars, she has stripped off and posed for clothing brand Panache’s Modelled by Role Models campaign, in which models are chosen for their accomplishments, not their body shape.
‘My message is just to be confident, no matter what you have been through – to know that constantly changing yourself is never going to make you happy, and just to embrace the body you have,’ she told The Scottish Mail on Sunday.
‘There are so many people who say: “I just
HAIR LOSS: Emily at secondary school need to lose a few more pounds or tone up more, and then I will be happy with myself.” But they are just never happy. You need be content with yourself.’
At the age of 14 Miss Findlay, from Orkney, was diagnosed in 2010 with neuroblastoma – a cancer that normally affects babies and young children.
She recalls: ‘I was in high school at the time and started experiencing really bad back pain, and I began falling over a lot and losing sensation in my legs. It was awful, I was in so much pain. For a while my GP said it was growing pains, but then we found that a tumour was pressing on my spinal cord. It was the size of a grapefruit. I was very close to being paralysed.’ During an operation at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, ‘I stopped breathing halfway through the surgery, so they had to take me off and sew me back up, and then continue the surgery two days later.’
She had intense chemotherapy, stem cell treatment and radiotherapy for the next 18 months, and by 2012 was in remission.
But in 2014 a lump in her neck signalled the return of the cancer, requiring another year of chemotherapy and six months of antibody therapy treatment: ‘It was horrendous treatment – it was a combination of injections and tablets that deliberately attacked my nervous system. I became really unwell and was in intensive care for a few days. I just wanted to give up.’
But the treatment was successful and Miss Findlay, who now lives in Aberdeen and studies events management, was proud to show off the scars of her cancer battle at the lingerie shoot.
‘I have a scar on my side, and a long one down my spine,’ she says. ‘And I have stretchmarks all the way up my hips and up my arms, because I put on so much weight and lost it dramatically during treatment. But I am quite happy with how I am.’