TV presenter Sarah Beeny had chemotherapy, a mastectomy, radiotherapy and reconstruction and now she views cancer as something that’s behind her and she is moving on and looking to the future with her family
Having had a double mastectomy to treat her own breast cancer and losing her mother to the same disease, you would imagine the dreaded C-word would be, well, even more dreaded for Sarah Beeny. But somehow, the opposite is true for the TV presenter and homes guru.
“A lot of people say to me that I must be a different person now, after having cancer,” she says. “But no, I’m exactly the same person, just with shorter hair I’m less scared of cancer. It’s just a thing, it’s over now and I’m moving on. I think we need to talk about and celebrate cancer survivors more too. I’m lucky. I had a lucky diagnosis. I’m lucky to live in the UK, lucky to have the NHS.”
That luck is something the 51-year-old is hoping to have shared with others after discovering a gene mutation which made her more likely to get the disease, prompting her decision to undergo a double mastectomy rather than a single.
Her results â negative for the widely known BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene, but positive for PALB2 â had wider implications for her children and potential future grandchildren, as well as for her siblings and wider family.