As I sat in the bath last summer I decided to inspect my breasts.
I lost my mum and sister to breast cancer, and I carry the faulty BRCA1 gene –
which increases your chances of developing the disease (I had an 85% chance) –
but despite all this it had never really worried me. On that day, however,
everything changed: I felt lumps. I panicked: were they just glands, or was I
riddled with cancer? I knew it was possible. I didn’t want to leave anything to
chance, so I made the decision there and then to have a preventive double
mastectomy. The next day I was at the doctor’s making an appointment. The
process went quickly, and before I knew it I had a date for the operation.