Sarah Cawood has been diagnosed with stage one breast cancer.
The TV presenter, 50, received her diagnosis last month after having her first routine mammogram.
Recalling how she found out about her cancer, the former Top of the Pops host told The Sun she received a letter after her inital mammogram in which doctors said “they couldn’t give me my screening result back yet”.
“So I had another mammogram and an ultrasound and then they said, ‘We’re going to biopsy you.’ That’s where they take a bit of tissue from your boob,” she explained.
It was later discovered that the lump in Cawood’s breat was not a cyst, causing her to worry that she could have an aggressive form of cancer.
“I did the lying in bed at night, not watching my children grow up thing,” she said. “I always think cancer seems like a slow death. It’s like being chucked out of the party early.”
Cawood’s husband, Andy Merry, accompanied her to find out her results.
“Nobody cried, it wasn’t very dramatic,” she said. “It’s just a lumpectomy, radio-therapy, then a drug called Tamoxifen, which is a hormone blocker, for five to ten years.”
Cawood said that she is struggling with the effects of coming off hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on the advice of doctors following her diagnosis. She added that the resulting brain fog has caused her to forget her daughter’s name twice.
The TV personality also joked about her regret over having not shown off her breasts more in the Nineties, at the height of her fame, having been held back by her then-boyfriend, Bluetones guitarist Adam Devlin.
“Back then, the way to really get your profile built up was to do lads’ mags shoots and I didn’t,” she said. “Partly because of Adam and partly out of some weird sense of propriety.
“Like, I’m not going to get my boobs out to get ahead. Why the f*** not? My boobs were epic. They still are.”
Cawood quipped that she “should have got them out” as they were “better than Denise Van Outen’s”.
“I could be presenting Strictly Come Dancing now,” she quipped. “But that didn’t happen and I don’t have any regrets.”
Cawood lives with her husband Merry and their son and daughter, Hunter, 10, and Autumn, nine.
