I WON'T LET cancer win

Victoria Knowles fought a deadly disease and is determined to help others through their battles

- JOHANNA BELL

I’ve always been fond of the saying ‘when your mind is calm the body follows’, but the words truly hit home for me when I was waiting to find out if I had cancer. For me, the not knowing was worse than getting the diagnosis, and I did everything I could during that time to get myself into a state of calm so that I was ready to battle the disease if I needed to.

I’d been lying in bed scrolling through Facebook in January 2022 when I found the lump in my left breast. My hand had instinctively reached down to the area when I’d felt a sharp pain. The lump, near my bra line, was tiny and gristly – not how I’d imagined a cancerous lump to feel. The next day it had gone, so I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t even tell my husband Edward, 40.

Though a week later, the same thing happened again. The lump still wasn’t very big, and it moved around when I touched it, but I felt like my body was trying to tell me something. Thankfully, my job as a business development and marketing manager provides private healthcare. I called them and they sent me for tests two hours later.

I didn’t think it was going to be cancer – more likely a cyst, but after going through test after test, I started to cry. I was suddenly so frightened and all I could think about was my seven-year-old son Thomas, and how I couldn’t leave him without a mum.

I waited four days for a biopsy result, during which I did as much research as I could. I spoke to women who were battling breast cancer on chat forums and found a sense of strength from them.