An ex-police officer believes her dieting “saved” her life after she dropped two stones - and then discovered a potentially fatal tumour on her breast. Lindsey Nottingham had joined a local slimming group when she was 47 as she wanted to “get a bit of weight off” following her early retirement.
But the former bobby with Lancashire Constabulary grew concerned after noticing a “hardened” lump on her right breast just a few months into her new regime. And Lindsey was shocked when doctors diagnosed her with stage two breast cancer after discovering that her 4.5cm (1.7 inch) growth was a potentially deadly tumour.
Married Lindsey, now 51, has undergone extensive drug therapies and four operations, which have thankfully forced the cruel disease into remission. However, specialists told her there would have been a “very, very different story” if her tumour had only been found during her statutory mammogram tests at 50.
She said: “I do think my weight loss saved my life. If I hadn’t lost those two stones initially, the cancer wouldn’t have been picked up until three years later. For it to be 4.5cm, that hadn’t appeared overnight, that’s been growing for some time – and that’s relatively big for a breast cancer tumour.
She added: “I don’t think I would be sat here talking if it had been left for three years."
Lindsey, from Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, said she had joined her local Slimming World group to cut down on her weight three years after retiring from active duty.
She said: “I was a police officer until 2015, so I was always relatively fit. I was in an active job, and then when I took my early retirement, I became more sedentary.
“I thought to myself, “You need to get a bit of this weight off.” And when I went along with my neighbour in May 2018, I thought, “Actually, this sounds alright.”
Lindsey was initially thrilled when she lost two stone in a matter of months, but then she found a worrying lump on her left breast while she was washing one morning. She said: “Within two or three months, the weight had started to come off.
“And then I was just in the shower one day, and with me having lost weight, things become a bit more noticeable, and I just thought, “That feels a bit unusual. I’ve not noticed that before”.
“I kind of sat on it for a couple of weeks thinking, “I’m 47 years old – it won’t be anything. It’s just because you’ve lost weight.”
Lindsey eventually booked an appointment with her local GP in October 2018 and was stunned when she was then referred to a specialist breast screening unit.
She said: “I went down to the GP that afternoon, and I said, “I’m embarrassed but I just wanted to get it checked out because I’ve spoken to friends about it.
“I showed him where it was, and I saw his face drop, and he said, “I think we need to refer you to the breast clinic.”
Lindsey then underwent a mammogram followed by an ultrasound and biopsy scans, with the test showing that she had a large cancerous tumour on her breast.
And doctors informed her that the disease might not have been treatable if the lump had only been picked up during routine tests when she turned 50.
Lindsey explained: “They said the tumour was 4.5cm, and I thought, ‘Bloody hell, that’s big!’ I said, ‘What would have happened if I hadn’t had come?’
“They said, ‘In three years’ time when you would have been called for a mammogram, it would have been a very, very different story.'"
Lindsey had a mastectomy two weeks after her initial diagnosis and was then put on a course of drug therapy.
And she also pushed her wedding date to her long-term girlfriend forward by one year, fearful she wouldn’t survive the dangerous disease. She said: “Due to me being diagnosed with cancer, we brought everything forward because at that point I didn’t know which way things were going to go.
“I had said to my wife: ‘If something happens to me, we need to be married. I don’t want my police pension going back to the government!’”
Lindsey had her last surgical procedure a week ago and has since returned to her Slimming World group. She said: “It’s been a bit of a whirlwind really, but as I said when I went back to slimming world, I honestly believe that if I hadn’t lost that initial two stone, I wouldn’t have found the cancer.
“And when I went back, and felt I needed to get myself to a proper healthy weight, back to how I was when I was a police officer - fit and healthy - and give myself the best fighting chance for the future."
