A woman who survived cancer was amused to learn her daughter had taken her prosthetic breast to school for show-and-tell. Helen Addis, 43, was diagnosed with triple-positive grade three breast cancer a week before her 40th birthday.
Instead of the big celebration she had planned for the milestone, the mother of three found herself undergoing a mastectomy and starting 18 months of treatment. Ms Addis, a producer for ITV's Lorraine programme, has now been given the all-clear.
“I never imagined I would receive a diagnosis like that", she said. “I always checked my breasts regularly, so it was shocking to hear just how severe and aggressive the cancer was.
“My mission is to get more people knowing their bodies and raising anything unusual with their doctor. It can be lifesaving.”
Ms Addis – who lives in Weybridge, Surrey, with husband Mark and their children – has launched a blog, The Titty Gritty, to give information about breast cancer and promote awareness of checking for lumps. She first learned something was wrong in January 2018 when she went to her doctor after suffering from night sweats.
She said: “I thought that I might be going through early menopause because I thought I was too young to be getting night sweats. I was back and forth getting various blood tests done, I was also very, very tired all the time.
“I just sort of put it down to hormones, but I was getting ready for work one morning putting moisturiser on my body when I noticed a chickpea-sized lump just below my nipple in my right breast.”
She added: “With my job, we interview a lot of cancer survivors, so I’m always very conscious of checking for lumps. I genuinely wasn’t worried because I had no family history of cancer and I was relatively young and healthy, though. On paper, I’m not the prime candidate for cancer.”
Referred to a specialist by her GP as a precaution, Ms Addis was horrified by the result. “They did a mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy and when a few days later I got the results, I simply didn’t see them coming my way", she said.
“I was diagnosed with triple-positive grade three breast cancer. There is no grade four for this type of cancer. It’s the most aggressive and basically means it’s the type that wants to travel.”
She added: “I was days away from my 40th birthday celebrations, but all I could think about now was the next course of action to tackle my diagnosis.” Cancelling her birthday plans, Ms Addis was booked in for a mastectomy to remove her right breast.
She said: “The hardest part for me was telling everyone. If I hadn’t been planning a party, I probably would have kept the diagnosis to myself, but I had no choice but to ring everyone up and explain why the party wasn’t going ahead.”
Her young children also needed to know. “I sat them down and tried to explain it in a way that they understood", Ms Addis said.
"They’d had verrucas before from the local swimming pool, so I explained to them that this was similar. I let them feel the lump and told them that I needed treatment to make it go away, just like verrucas.
“My eldest, who was nine at the time, immediately asked me if it was cancer. I was taken aback because I didn’t know he was so aware of cancer as no one in our family had had it.”
She added: “I said yes and then he asked if I was going to die. My instinctive reaction was to reassure him, so I told him that I wasn’t going to die.”
Following the mastectomy to remove her right breast, Ms Addis learned she needed further surgery to remove her lymph nodes. A total of 16 rounds of chemotherapy, 15 rounds of radiotherapy and 18 rounds of hormone therapy later, she was given the all-clear.
Despite feeling a "shell" of herself, a full body scan revealed she was cancer-free and check-ups since have remained clear. Ms Addis said her children provided some much-needed light relief during the ordeal.
“Before I had reconstruction surgery on my breast, I had a prosthetic, which I would wear when I was going out", she said. "I found it in my youngest child’s school bag one evening. When I asked her about it she told me that she’d taken it to school for show and tell!”
She added: “Another funny time was when Mark and I had taken the kids to a theme park and some people were being allowed to jump the queue. Archie asked me why they were going first and I said I didn’t know but that maybe they were VIPs or special guests.
“He told me that I should tell them I have cancer so that we could jump the queue too! It’s never a dull moment with the kids.”
Ms Addis said her breast cancer journey had been an education, as much as anything for the awareness it raised of how little people know about the disease. “When I was first diagnosed, I spoke to family and friends about it and was shocked to find out that most of them don’t regularly check for lumps", she said.
A desire to improve public knowledge of the symptoms led her to found her blog. Ms Addis also supports online platform Perci Health, which provides those undergoing primary cancer treatment access to support from experts.
She said: “I’ve been getting involved in raising awareness. The mission is to get people to know their bodies so that they are aware of any changes or unusual lumps and bumps. The sooner it’s flagged, the more treatable it will be.”
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