i heard this somewhere about breast cancer, Jane Howell sees the years since her mastectomy as nothing less than a transforming journey." I'm not the same person was before. I now look after myself better than I did. I've taken a degree in counselling, I've discovered the joy of skiing (previously I was too scared to learn); I speak my mind instead of storing up hurt, and above all my marriage is a lot stronger than it was before cancer. Yet on diagnosis with a very aggressive type three breast cancer, Jane, a former nurse, despaired: 'I was just 40 and my youngest child was only six My treatment was delayed because the lump I first discovered a year earlier, seemed to disappear for a while. So statistically the prognosis was not great. I remember being so frightened and overcome with urgency to be rid of the tumour that I persuaded my surgeon to forgo his golf to operate on me the very next day.

In hospital, after surgery, I couldn't stop crying, irrationally convinced that I would never get out of the place alive. I remember the Sister reproving me and telling mel really had to stop the tears because a friend had arrived to visit. My friend just said that it was fine with her if I wanted to cry - she would just sit and cry with me. Moments later we were doubled up laughing because we'd seen the dragon off! And perhaps that was the first step to recognising that my world hadn't ended. The next was going out into the hospital gardens on day seven, kicking off my shoes feeling the grass still there beneath my bare feet. 'Yes' I thought 'I'm feeling a little bit stronger, and things do get better.'"