'It's incredible what women can achieve'

Actress Amanda Mealing opens up on her cancer ordeal, survivor's guilt and facing the future

- ALI GRAVES

STAYING STRONG

More than 20 years may have passed since her cancer diagnosis, but TV star Amanda Mealing tells us it feels like no time at all.

“Life happens,” says the 56-year-old Holby City and Casualty actress, when we meet for our exclusive chat. “It’s a journey and only you go through it. You can have all the love and support around you but you’re the only person that travels with it.”

Amanda was only 34 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer – just 24 hours after giving birth to her second son, Otis. Looking back, she still can’t believe how it happened.

“It was shocking. I’d always bought my pink ribbon in October but never thought about what that would entail,” she says. “I’d just given birth – my hormones and emotions were all over the place.”

Looking back on that traumatic time, she tells us it was “literally like the world stopped” as she listened to the consultant’s words. “I was in a bubble afterwards,” she reveals. “I could see and faintly hear other people around me. I was thinking, ‘How are you carrying on?’ It’s a bizarre thing, but I’m a fighter. I also had a newborn and a three-year-old. I thought, ‘You are not taking me now.’ I wasn’t going to give up.”

It was thanks to Amanda’s father-in-law that her condition was investigated so quickly. The retired GP examined the star when she complained of what she thought was a blocked milk duct during the latter stages of her pregnancy.