Mum-of-two Steph Davis was just 35 when she was told that the bleeding from her nipple was down to breast cancer and she needed a mastectomy. She talks to MARION SAUVEBOIS about her battle to survive to see her children grow up

THE instant the breast consultant uttered the word ‘mastectomy’, Steph Davis shut down, staring blankly ahead, unable to reconcile how just hours earlier, before cancer crept into her life, she had been blithely planning her toddler’s birthday meal.

“I couldn’t speak,” recalls the mother-of-two from Trowbridge, who was just 35 when she received the devastating diagnosis. “I was completely unprepared. You just go into a blind panic and almost start planning your funeral. After they said ‘mastectomy’ I didn’t hear anything else.

“The plan was to go out for a family meal for my daughter’s second birthday after the appointment. I kept thinking, ‘I need to be there to see my daughter grow up’.”

Unlike many patients, Steph did not feel a lump, or discomfort – in fact, as unusual at it may seem, she did not feel anything untoward until a colleague pointed out teasingly a small brown stain on her pristine work tunic. Clumsy by nature, the former beauty therapist assumed she had once again split coffee on her uniform.

When she noticed another blot on the cleavage of her beauty therapy coat a few days later, she inspected her bra and spotted a dark speckle. She was bleeding from the nipple.

Not especially alarmed – she suspected a milk ducts infection as they had previously been blocked - she consulted her GP.

“I thought it was just an infection,” explains the 54-year-old. “I had had mastitis and blocked milk ducts so I thought maybe it was left over from that. I was only 35 at the time. And I had never heard of that symptom. Neither me or the GP could find a lump. I still didn’t have it in my head what it could really be.”

She was nonetheless booked in for a needle biopsy and mammogram at RUH. Two weeks later, on her daughter Leah’s second birthday, the news fell. She had breast cancer and would have to undergo a mastectomy immediately. The tumour was lodged too close to the chest wall to allow for a far less invasive lumpectomy.

“I was floored,” adds the receptionist. “I decided to fight it with all my being. My children made me fight.

Talking to other survivors and the hell they’ve been through with chemotherapy and radiotherapy I was lucky it was caught early and I didn’t need any other treatment. It was all dealt with in one go.”

Despite her resolve to stay strong for her children, Leah and Ryan, nine, she grappled to come to terms with losing a part of herself so deeply connected to a woman’s sense of self and femininity. The surgery took its toll on her confidence. She wore a prosthesis and her scars remained invisible to the rest of the world, and yet she felt hounded by cancer, certain passers-by and customers could spy its ravages on her body.

“It was horrendous,” she confides. “I felt everybody could see it. I had a prosthesis for two years because I didn’t want to rush into reconstructive surgery and be incapacitated again straight away. You think people are looking at you all the time, wonder whether they know or not.

“It was really hard going back to work. Everything I did was about making women feel better about themselves and beautiful.”

She pauses, thoughtful, before adding decisively: “But sometimes, putting on a brave face, you eventually realise that you have got a brave face. Fake it until you make it. Although everyone is sympathetic, you can’t be miserable and the face of doom all the time. I know people who suffered greatly with side effects of cancer and breast removal. You are lucky to be here. In the scheme of things you have to remind yourself that it’s all that matters.”

Reconstructive breast surgery in 1999 at Frenchay Hospital was a major turning point, she admits however.

“After the surgery I was back to being me again,” she says. “I felt I could wear more feminine dresses. With the prosthesis you don’t feel you can wear low cut tops. There is always the possibility that the prosthesis could show.”

Shortly after entering remission, Steph decided to harness her traumatic experience and join other survivors in the fight against breast cancer. In 2005, she volunteered to model at the Breast Cancer Care annual fashion show. The following year she backed fundraiser Wayne Palmer’s Ladies Night, then held in Melksham in support of the charity. Along with Wayne’s dedicated band of volunteers she has been instrumental in securing tens of thousands of pounds for breast cancer research.

Debunking the myths surrounding cancer has also been top of her agenda.

“Everyone thinks you get breast cancer when you’re older but unfortunately it can hit when you’re younger as well. I wanted people to be aware, and check themselves. It’s not just a lump. It can be puckering, anything that’s out of the norm. Raising awareness was a no brainer.”

She received the all-clear seven years ago and yet Steph admits her ordeal has left her in a constant state of alert, probing any fleeting pain, or benign ache.

“It’s always at the back of your mind unfortunately, even though you have the all-clear, because it can still come back. They are days when you think about it and others you don’t. If you lose someone to cancer it brings it all back. That fear never goes away but you can’t let it take over your life. You have to move on otherwise there’s no point surviving.”