TV producer with breast cancer blog The Titty Gritty finds her prosthetic boob in daughter’s bag after she takes it to school to ‘show and tell’

A TV producer who started a blog called The Titty Gritty to raise awareness after having breast cancer found her prosthetic boob in her daughter’s bag and discovered she had taken it to school for ‘show and tell.’

Mum-of-three Helen Addis, 43, had her life turned upside down when she was diagnosed with triple positive grade 3 breast cancer – an aggressive form of the disease – just a week before her 40th birthday when, instead of the big celebration she had planned, she had a mastectomy.

Enduring 18 months of treatment, Helen, who lives in Weybridge, Surrey, with her sales director husband, Mark, 45, and their children, Archie, 12, April, 10, and Belle, nine, and now has the all clear, said: “I never imagined I would receive a diagnosis like that.”

She added: “I always checked my breasts regularly, so it was shocking to hear just how severe and aggressive the cancer was.

“My mission is to get more people knowing their bodies and raising anything unusual with their doctor. It can be lifesaving.”

Helen’s nightmare began in January 2018, when she went to the doctor after suffering from night sweats.

She said: “I thought that I might be going through early menopause ,because I thought I was too young to be getting night sweats.

“I was back and forth getting various blood tests done, I was also very, very tired all the time.

“I just sort of put it down to hormones, but I was getting ready for work one morning putting moisturiser on my body, when I noticed a chickpea-sized lump just below my nipple in my right breast.”

She added: “With my job, we interview a lot of cancer survivors, so I’m always very conscious of checking for lumps. I genuinely wasn’t worried because I had no family history of cancer and I was relatively young and healthy, though.

“On paper, I’m not the prime candidate for cancer.”

Referred to a specialist as a precaution by her GP,  she was horrified by the result.

She said: “They did a mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy and when, a few days later, I got the results, I simply didn’t see them coming my way.

“I was diagnosed with triple positive grade 3 breast cancer.

“There is no grade four for this type of cancer. It’s the most aggressive and basically means it’s the type that wants to travel.”

She added: “I was days away from my 40th birthday celebrations, but all I could think about now was the next course of action to tackle my diagnosis.”

Cancelling her birthday plans, Helen was booked in for a mastectomy to remove her right breast.

She said: “The hardest part for me was telling everyone. If I hadn’t been planning a party, I probably would have kept the diagnosis to myself, but I had no choice but to ring everyone up and explain why the party wasn’t going ahead.”

Her young children also needed to know.

She said: “I sat them down and tried to explain it in a way that they understood. They’d had verrucas before from the local swimming pool, so I explained to them that this was similar. I let them feel the lump and told them that I needed treatment to make it go away, just like verrucas.

“My eldest, who was nine at the time, immediately asked me if it was cancer. I was taken aback, because I didn’t know he was so aware of cancer, as no one in our family had had it.”

She added: “I said yes and then he asked if I was going to die. My instinctive reaction was to reassure him, so I told him that I wasn’t going to die.”

But, following a mastectomy to remove her right breast, Helen needed further surgery.

She said: “The mastectomy results came back and I was told the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes, so I had to get those removed too.”

She added: “Once I’d recovered, I started chemo, which was very gruelling.”

Helen had 16 rounds of chemotherapy spread over six months, following by 15 rounds of radiotherapy five days a week for just over three weeks, then 18 rounds of hormone therapy – getting the all clear after 18 months of treatment, but saying she was a “shell” of herself.

Luckily, a full body scan after the hormone therapy did not detect any cancer and check-ups since have remained clear.

But despite the horror of it all, she says her children provided some priceless moments.

She said: “Before I had reconstruction surgery on my breast, I had a prosthetic, which I would wear when I was going out.

“I found it in my youngest child’s school bag one evening. When I asked her about it she told me that she’d taken it to school for show and tell!”

She added: “Another funny time was when Mark and I had taken the kids to a theme park and some people were being allowed to jump the queue. Archie asked me why they were going first and I said I didn’t know but that maybe they were VIPs or special guests.

“He told me that I should tell them I have cancer, so that we could jump the queue too!

“It’s never a dull moment with the kids.”

Helen’s breast cancer journey has been an education, as much as anything for the awareness it has raised of how little people know about the disease.

She said: “When I was first diagnosed, I spoke to family and friends about it and was shocked to find out that most of them don’t regularly check for lumps.

“After getting the all-clear, I wanted to raise awareness about checking your breasts.”

This led to her starting her blog, The Titty Gritty, to promote greater knowledge about checking for lumps and give information about breast cancer in general.

She said: “I’ve been getting involved in raising awareness. The mission is to get people to know their bodies, so that they are aware of any changes or unusual lumps and bumps.

“The sooner it’s flagged, the more treatable it will be.”

• Helen also supports online platform Perci Health that gives people access to support from multidisciplinary cancer teams after discovering people often feel ‘abandoned’ following primary cancer treatment. For more information, visit: www.percihealth.com