Exclusive:
Three of the nine inspirational women, Heather, Nicola and Diana, who have taken part in a ground-breaking in podcast, Sex And The Titty, reveal how breast cancer had affected their confidence and relationships
Proving you don’t need breasts to look incredible, Heather Glover chose not to have reconstruction after her double mastectomy.
Having just had chemo, the mum-of-three says, “I was too thin for the op, and I didn’t want to be like Mrs Doubtfire with fake boobs. But my husband Rich built my confidence and told me, ‘You look better now with no boobs and you’ve got a great athletic figure’.”
Heather, 53, from Macclesfield, Cheshire, is fighting breast cancer for the third time after doctors told her in October that it had returned and was incurable. “I was a fit and healthy nurse in my 40s when I found a lump which was triple negative breast cancer. When it came back a second time, I had a double mastectomy. I’d just celebrated five years clear when it returned in my chest bone and lymph.
“I’ve since found out that I had three higher risks – I got lumps since I was a teenager, had dense breasts, and a familial history. I was just waiting to get breast cancer.
“I’m on a mission to beat it,” says Heather. “But I’m also not scared to die. I’m just going back to my late mum and dad – and George Michael!”
It was the monthly text reminder from CoppaFeel! that saved Nicola Ryder’s life. “I was so shocked to find a lump as I’d just got back from holiday and hadn’t felt anything while putting suncream on, but I do remember lying on my front while sunbathing thinking, ‘Ooh that hurt.’”
“The lump had come on very quickly, and tests showed it was triple negative breast cancer. Then I was passed to the genetic clinic and I tested positive for BRCA.”
The 50-year-old advertising agency director from Bolton, Gtr Manchester, says she was a body confident person before cancer. “Since my double mastectomy I have had implants and tattooed nipples but being put into a medically-induced menopause has changed me. I feel I have aged much quicker, lost muscle tone and have thinning hair. I was offered to freeze my eggs but decided against it.
“I’ve not been in a relationship since my diagnosis, and have lost confidence as my breasts don’t look normal. I try to be positive, but the thought of cancer returning is always in my mind.”
The “No sex we’re British” attitude is made even worse when you add cancer into the mix, according to Diana Jones, who was trying to come to terms with her husband Brian’s cancer diagnosis when she found a lump in December 2016.
“At my first chemo session I had a young, embarrassed nurse push a leaflet across the table,” says Diana, now 58. “She didn’t want to say the word sex, or think about me – a mature woman – getting it on! And I was thinking, ‘Is it appropriate to ask if I can have sex while I’m having chemo?’”
Diana, a mum-of-four with three grandchildren, had a mastectomy, chemo and radiotherapy and then due to recovery times and Covid delays, it took four years before she finally had her reconstruction a year ago.
“Breast cancer and the treatment was a complete attack of everything about being a woman. I lost my breast, every single hair on my body, my fingernails, my toenails.
“My GP prescribed me anti-depressants and that crashed my libido even more. John Travolta could have walked stark naked into my bedroom and it wouldn’t have done anything for me.
“And I just thought, ‘Why would my husband want to have sex with a bald, lop-sided woman?’ But of course he did. The important part of this whole process is that you learn just what love is.”
• Sex And The Titty podcast goes live on February 14 boobee.co.uk/sex-and-the-titty
