Working as a consultant breast surgeon, it was my responsibility to tell around 10 women a week that they had cancer. It was an emotionally intense job and could feel like you’re being paid to break women. Sometimes, particularly after seeing young women, I’d cry in the toilets. There’s no counselling and very little training for breaking bad news. It’s just part of the job – until it happens to you.
In 2015, aged 40, I found a lump. Despite my job, I never regularly checked my breasts, a fact that seems crazy now, but I simply assumed that it wasn’t going to happen to me. In the past, I’d had two cysts that were benign and a normal mammogram nine months earlier. Still, I decided to get checked just to be safe. I didn’t want my team at work to see me, so I went to a different hospital.
