Agony Aunt Deirdre Sanders has opened up on This Morning about her breast cancer returning – after first revealing her secret battle last September.
Deirdre told Cat Deeley and Ben Shepherd on ITV’s This Morning had returned to her left breast but was due to have surgery on October 11. She said: “Unfortunately, I’ve got to have a lumpectomy followed by radiotherapy. I feel lucky, it’s been caught early and the treatment is happening very rapidly.”
“This is all on the NHS so I think I am so lucky. It could be so much worse. To be honest, the symptoms I had the first time were a coincidence and not actually a symptom of the cancer as it turns out. An efficient GP put me on the cancer pathway and I got a very rapid check and treatment.
Read more – This Morning agony aunt Deidre Sanders issues urgent plea after cancer diagnosis
“I’ve felt well, I haven’t felt tired or run down. I couldn’t feel anything, it’s very tiny so there’s nothing to feel. It’s purely down to the mammogram which showed it up. I had an ultrasound and a biopsy and it revealed it was cancer.”
Deirdre, 78, shared she was initially “shocked” by her cancer diagnosis as she didn’t feel any different but is now keen for women to not skip their mammogram screenings. The NHS generally halts these invitations for women after 70, but they can still request them, reports the Mirror.
(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
“I was shocked. I felt fine. I was so taken aback, I wasn’t expecting it at all”, Deirdre revealed, adding her message for others: “My big point about this is that on the NHS system, I’m not criticising it, the call for mammograms stop when you are 70.”
“I happened to be in a cohort of women who got missed and we didn’t get called. I hadn’t had a mammogram since I was 67, so ten years had gone by. I didn’t give it a thought. I didn’t know anything about it. But what I do now know is that when you’re over 70, you can request a mammogram on the NHS and you should get one every year. Please, if you’re a woman over 70, request your mammogram. The reason I’ve had an easy time this time and last time is because it was caught so early.”
Cat Deeley praised Deidre for coming on to the show to reveal the diagnosis saying: “It really is a truly amazing thing that you are sitting here now”. Stoic Deidre said it was simply “her job” to help people have “difficult conversations”.
When Deidre first revealed her fight against cancer a year ago in September 2023, she told former hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby: “I think people panic at the word cancer often, and they can be scared of even going to a doctor with their initial worry because they’re terrified of getting a diagnosis, even though getting the diagnosis is what leads to treatment. We can be so scared about that word so I am really happy to bring it out into the open.”
She also praised her medical team: “I have to say the breast clinic I have been attending are so kind and caring, they have been so lovely. That is very reassuring.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
