SMILING THROUGH CANCER

Like most mums, when my kids are upset I’ll do almost anything to turn their frowns upside down, whether it’s making Max, 11, his favourite chocolate cake or putting on silly voices for Georgia, eight, when she’s had a bad day at school.

- CATHERINE JONES, JULIA SIDWELL

That’s why, in my darkest hour, after being diagnosed with stage three breast cancer, I put on a brave face, hiding my fear and despair at the news that threatened to shatter our world. Every morning, throughout gruelling chemotherapy, when my legs felt like jelly and I was overwhelmed with nausea, I’d pull on a silly wig to do the school run – anything to make my kids laugh and help them to deal with my diagnosis.

It all started in July 2022, when I saw the GP after feeling a sharp pain in my left breast and finding a pea-sized lump. I was referred for scans and a biopsy and told that if it was anything sinister they’d be in touch to arrange an appointment. A couple of weeks later, when we were on a family holiday in Menorca, I received a text message from the hospital asking me to come in. My stomach lurched.

I showed my husband Chris, then 37, and saw the fear mirrored in his eyes, but we didn’t talk about it. Instead, we plastered on smiles, splashing in the pool and speeding down. I’d only just lost my mum Margaret to myeloma, a type of blood cancer, a year before. She was just 61. My mind raced ahead to treatment, to what would happen if I didn’t make it and how my kids would cope without a mum.

I’m not sure how we got through the rest of the holiday. The day after we arrived home, I went to Thomas Linacre hospital in Wigan, and the doctors explained that triple negative, that was more likely to recur than other types. Telling the kids and seeing Max burst into tears was like a dagger to my heart.

‘Are you going to die, like Nana?’ he asked. Too choked to answer, Chris reassured him that I was young and healthy and the doctors had it in hand. Georgia, then six, was too young to understand.