WHEN Sarah Beeny was told she had breast cancer she started thinking about picking a coffin – but ended up selecting a new pair of boobs instead.
It typified the highs and lows that the Property Ladder presenter went through, chronicled in a moving new Channel 4 documentary.
Sarah Beeny Vs Cancer follows her from her diagnosis last August to the point where she went into remission, had a double mastectomy and got the chance to select the shape and size of her implants.
The mother of four, who has been married to Graham Swift for 20 years, said: “I’ve now got my fake boobs in and they’re pretty similar to the old ones, actually.
“They just took the old ones out of the inside and stuck some new innards in.
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"It’s like restuffing a cushion . . . apart from the fact these ones feel a bit like memory foam, which is a bit weird.
“So they’re actually similar apart from the fact that when I lie down, they don’t fall to the side at all. They sort of stay there, like Belisha beacons.
“If I’m honest, I consider this to be the end point. I need this to be the end for me and I need it to be the end for the kids and for Graham and our family.”
Sarah, 51, sounds flippant about the process, even laughing along when Graham jokes about her coming back from her reconstructive surgery with “porn-star boobs”.
But she deliberately wanted to remove some of the terror from her diagnosis and reassure anyone who may have concerns that it isn’t a death sentence.
And by chronicling her journey, which was extremely gruelling at times, she hopes to provide inspiration and reassurance to viewers of the documentary, which will be screened on Monday next week.
Sarah said: “It’s that fear that keeps a lot of people from going and checking things out and getting treatment, so trust your body and go and get it checked out at a proper breast clinic.
“If you get the diagnosis that I got ten months ago my message would be, ‘Don’t be afraid, because amazing people are doing amazing things and the outlook is getting better every day’.”
She added: “Fear is the main reason I wanted to make this. They tell you you’ve got breast cancer and you sort of interpret that as, ‘What colour coffin do you fancy?’
“But you get over the first bit, and the second bit. They’re all mountains to climb.”
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The diagnosis came as no surprise to Sarah, mother to boys Billy, 19, Charlie, 17, Raffey, 15 and Laurie, 13.
She says she had been waiting 40 years to be told she had cancer, since her mum Ann died of the disease aged just 39, when Sarah was ten.
Ann had six years of chemotherapy as part of a clinical trial in the 1970s, but her “hesitance” to try radiotherapy saw her pass away at home six years into her treatment.
Sarah says: “My mother died and didn’t meet her grandchildren, so that I can meet my grandchildren.”
For Sarah, her mother’s experience meant there would be no delay in taking action after she found a lump in her breast, and confirmation she had a PALB2 genetic mutation which made her more susceptible to developing cancer.
It can be hereditary, but she didn’t inherit it from her mother.
Reassuring herself, Sarah defiantly states at the start of the documentary: “I’m not going to die, you know.
“I’ve got a whole life where I’m needed. I’ve got four children. People need their mother. The truth is, I kind of needed my mother.”
After a mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy last summer, Sarah was told she had a high-grade, multi-focal, invasive ductal carcinoma — a cancer type that often spreads through the body.
But the initial shock was quick to wear off, as she had expected to receive the diagnosis years before, when she reached 39.
She explained: “I’ve been quite vigilant because my mother died from breast cancer spreading. I’d spent years sort of thinking, ‘S**t, it’s going to happen’.
“I had this appointment and said, ‘Oh, I’ve got this lump’, and showed it to them. A week later they called me back in, and you know you’ve got breast cancer because you can tell from their eyes.
“There’s a doctor with the eyes, and there’s a breast cancer support nurse with the eyes. So I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got cancer, so what are we going to do about it?’”
Despite reassurance from oncologists that her prognosis — with cancer only in her left breast — saw an 80 per cent survival rate, it did not stop Sarah assuming the worst.
Buzz cut
She told Radio Times: “’How am I going to organise the funeral? What kind of coffin do I need?’ Those were the first things that went through my head.
“My second son Charlie pointed out that, actually, we know way more people who have got over cancer than died of it, but when you hear the word, you think of the people you know who have died.
“We’re all slightly hindered by historical opinions which are not necessarily based on the reality of treatment today.”
The first step for Sarah was to undergo six rounds of chemotherapy, all while allowing cameras to follow her from home to treatment and on the way to surgery.
After heading off alone for her first treatment, she cut her signature blonde locks into a buzz cut with the help of her sons.
Her watching husband says: “The really awful thing is that as soon as she cut her hair off, you can’t sort of pretend that it’s not happening.”
But the ever-positive Sarah jokes back: “With my matted hair, you can make a smaller wig for a child.
“How many children want hair like this? They would probably turn it down.”
For Sarah, it was difficult moments like this that she hoped to capture on screen.
She says: “I thought maybe if I made a film about it, it would help me process it, and maybe it would help other people who felt they are on their own.
“I definitely did have that thought, ‘Maybe I should do this on my own’. I find going through it on my own is where I find the grit, the inner steel.”
Nonetheless, Sarah struggled to shave off her remaining hair after it came out in clumps two weeks after her first chemo.
Everything became increasingly real when, during the school run, she found she could pull out her hair by the handful. She later let son Raffey take a razor to what was left.
Recalling the difficult decision, she says in the documentary: “I don’t really want to be a victim. I just want to be normal.”
Looking back on the haircut, she said: “The weird thing is that it’s often been a punishment for women to have their hair cut off, but I wanted to take ownership.
“I actually found it quite empowering.”
She went on to have a wig fitted on the NHS’s wigs and fabric support service, to wear during her ongoing TV appearances.
Her next challenge came in the form of a bilateral mastectomy in March, which she agreed to in order to avoid the increased risk of cancer in her right breast due to the PALB2 mutation.
She explains in the documentary: “I can’t quite face going through chemo and another mastectomy a year or two down the line.”
The operation involved the removal of tissue from both of Sarah’s breasts and the insertion of the implants.
The procedure was an important milestone for her.
She said: “It feels a bit like a sort of marathon, you just keep going forward and keep going forward and then you see the end.
“We just need to get on with having fun and enjoying every day and moving forward in a non-cancer world.”
- Sarah Beeny's New Country Lives is on Channel 4, weekdays at 5pm. Sarah Beeny vs Cancer is on Channel 4 at 9pm on 12th June.
