I was diagnosed with breast cancer and went from a G cup to a C with surgery

I sat in the exam room as a doctor drew my body, her black pen marking my skin and creating an absurd diagram of what a reconstruction would look like. It wasn’t the last – another male doctor arrived with his blue pen and finally my consultant, armed with a red pen.

At the end of the preoperative stage, I looked like a children’s coloring book. But this was the final step towards what would give me a new – and hopefully healthy – body.

I was 41 years old and just two months before I had been diagnosed with breast cancer. In March, the Princess of Wales’ cancer diagnosis prompted a huge spike in visits to cancer charity websites and the NHS.

Getting cancer in your forties like her is not at all unusual. For me, it wasn’t as much of a shock when I was told about my own cancer as it could have been.

My grandmother had died of breast cancer at the age of 39. At 60, my mother was diagnosed with this disease, and my sister was too, just a few years before me.

Both made a full recovery with chemotherapy and radiation. After my mother’s diagnosis, my sisters and I were fortunate enough to be referred to family history clinics in our respective health areas.

I live in Manchester so I received excellent care at the Nightingale Center at Wythenshawe Hospital. They sat down with me and created a family tree – of all cancers, not just breast cancer – on both my mother’s side and my father’s side – which made for sobering reading.

As a result of one of the annual mammograms I have had since the age of 36, following the first lockdown from Covid, my tumor was discovered in its early stages. When they found it and told me I had cancer, I felt numb.

My mom passed away in 2020 from non-cancer related issues and I suddenly realized that these were real, grown-up things and she wasn’t around to tell me everything was going to be okay . But there was nothing to do but follow the doctor’s advice and do my best to get rid of this disease.

I met with the consultant and a fantastic breast cancer nurse called Eileen and went from there. Genetic testing shows that my family did not have the BRCA gene.

Actor and activist Angelina Jolie found out she had the BRCA1 gene more than a decade ago. As a result, she decided to have her own preventive mastectomy in 2013, reducing her chances of developing breast cancer from 87% to below 5%.

But whether another gene was at play or not, there was cancer on both my mother’s and her sister’s sides. Due to family history it seemed quite likely to return and the consultant told me that the best course of action for a healthy cancer free future would be a double mastectomy with full reconstruction – essentially what I was going to do . “fake breasts”.

That was probably the biggest shock. As it was, I had worn a G-cup bra since I was in my 20s, but the consultant somewhat coyly told me that the largest implants the NHS uses are a C-cup.

I was absolutely blown away. Of course, being cancer free was the most important thing and I was lucky that after the operation I wouldn’t need chemotherapy or radiation which can have such a devastating effect.

But I realized then for perhaps the first time that the surgery would change my body and my life forever. Eileen was fantastic.

We spoke often in the lead up to surgery and she was on hand to answer any questions we had, no matter how small. We spent an afternoon in a room at the Nightingale Center looking through photos of “before” and “after” breasts that had been implanted for other cancer patients.

We debated whether I wanted ‘teardrop’ or ’round’ implants, the reasons for each being purely aesthetic. I had read about people having mastectomies that were “painful” to their bodies, and through these discussions and the outcome sessions I was preparing for, I fully understood that everything was going to be different.

But at that stage, the idea of ​​dropping a few bra sizes seemed like a fair and equitable trade-off for my future health. On the day of my surgery, when I became a doodle board for the medical professionals, everything was so big.

I was wheeled into surgery and treated so kindly by the surgical team before retiring back under my general anaesthetic. When I woke up in the recovery room I was sore and dizzy and was soon taken back to the ward.

When I needed to go to the bathroom that evening or overnight, there were fantastic staff to help me, but the bruising and pain in my body meant I was still unaware of the massive physical change. It wasn’t until the days and weeks after, when I was back home, that I realized how different my body was.

I was only able to wear button-down clothes for the first six weeks, given the difficulty in raising my arms over my head. But I immediately found that my pre-op blouses and shirts were way too big across the bust.

I actually dropped a dress size up now that I had what in my mind were “small” breasts – which I know many women would disagree with. It’s been three years since that day and now I’m 100% used to my body.

Better yet, they are cancer free and healthy and happy and deserve any medical treatment. But when I hear people make comments about ‘fake breasts’ I always think ‘if only they knew about me’.