Breast surgeon who never checked for lumps diagnosed with cancer: ‘I thought it would never happen to me’

Breast surgeon who never checked herself for lumps diagnosed with cancerCredit: Talk TV

Transcript

00:00 Talk to me though about this awful moment

00:02 when instead of being the surgeon

00:04 rebuilding other women's breasts

00:06 and making them healthy and beautiful,

00:08 you found that you had breast cancer yourself.

00:11 - Well, I'm gonna be honest with you, Vanessa.

00:12 I never checked my breasts.

00:14 - Gosh.

00:15 - I was a breast surgeon.

00:16 I thought it's not gonna happen to me.

00:17 I was 40, I was fit.

00:19 And one morning I got out of the shower

00:20 and I just saw a lump in the mirror.

00:22 And I went to get it checked out.

00:24 And a week later I was starting chemotherapy.

00:26 And I realized how little I knew

00:29 about what it was like to have breast cancer.

00:31 It came back on my chest wall in 2018.

00:33 And again, the day before the book launched this year.

00:35 And I think women need to know

00:36 if you've had it once, it can come back.

00:37 So you do need to know the signs of recurrence.