Cancer Gave Me A £1M Idea

Tracey Broadway was determined that bad news wouldnt beat her.

- Kara O'Neill & Rosa Mcmahon

I’ve never been the sort of person who could properly relax and switch off. Even when I was growing up, I fervently believed that there was always something better I could be doing than sitting still – I was a member of a karate club which I’d attend three or four times a week – even my mum (an avid organiser) couldn’t keep up with where I was and when. at the time, I think I drove her mad, but now I credit my drive and that determination to forever be on the go to not just changing my life, but saving it, too.

It was November 2014, and as I took a bath I could hear my partner Henry reading to our children Henry Jnr, then four, and Matilda, three, in the other room. Just as he was getting to the end of the story, I felt it – the soft pea-sized lump in my right breast.

I sat there, prodding it for the next 10 minutes, before wrapping myself in a towel and draining the bath. Now, this is the moment you’d probably expect me to book an appointment with my GP. But I didn’t. I reasoned that as I was 33 and relatively healthy, there was no way it could be anything sinister.

Emotionally fraught

Only, over the next few weeks, every time I felt for it, the lump was still there. When I eventually went to get it checked in December, a nurse reassured me it was just fatty tissue. But three months on, the lump was still bothering me, so I went back to my GP surgery and this time I insisted on a blood test and a biopsy. A few weeks later, in April 2015, I received my test results. I had stage 1 breast cancer.