Her mum died of breast cancer aged just 39, when she was 10 years old, so learning she had developed the same disease was terrifying for mum-of-four Sarah Beeny.
In August last year, Sarah found a lump and was diagnosed with breast cancer aged 50. Hearing the news was heartbreaking, but when doctors said her condition was treatable, she focused hard on recovering and staying strong for her children and husband.
“After I was told, it was really bad,” shares Sarah. “But it got better because then you realise you’re not going to die.”
Sarah was already booked in for a routine mammogram when she found a lump in her breast, but she was wrongly reassured by medics that everything was fine. Four months later, the lump was still there and Sarah’s husband Graham Swift urged Sarah to seek a second opinion.
“I phoned the GP this time,” says Sarah. “They just said, ‘Go straight to a breast cancer unit.’ At the breast cancer unit they do a mammogram, ultrasound and a biopsy all in one go. It’s amazing.”
Sarah asked them to text her the results but the clinicians insisted she return to receive them in person.
“I sort of knew I had cancer when I left there,” says Sarah. “My message to anyone would be if you’ve got a lump, just keep on checking.”
“In a funny way, Sarah had been expecting this to happen ever since I’ve known her,” says Graham, who has been married to Sarah since 2002.
Sarah’s mum Ann died after her breast cancer spread to her brain. Graham adds, “She’s very strong. She’s a force of nature. But it’s the first time that she’s been frightened for herself. There was always that shadow of, ‘My mum died at 39.’ Her 40th birthday was a really big deal for her.”
When Sarah found out she had cancer, her first instinct was to protect those she loves from the devastating news and she briefly fantasised about going through treatment in secret. However, she cycled through a range of emotions and realised she could never hide something so life-changing from Graham and that her children would want to support her.
“I was mainly worried about the kids and I was thinking, ‘What if they find some tablets or realise it’s a wig?’” says Sarah. “I was like, ‘I am never going to get away with this in a million years.’ And I wasn’t sure I could get through it without Graham knowing. Then I realised it wasn’t my secret to keep, because that’s not fair.”
It wasn’t just a case of telling her family. Sarah took the decision to go public with her diagnosis so that her children felt they could seek support freely.
“I didn’t want them to think, ‘Well I can’t talk to the teacher,’ or, ‘I mustn’t talk to this friend because Mum hasn’t told them.’ It’s not my secret because when you have cancer, everyone who loves you goes through cancer too. That’s what people don’t talk about.”
Even throughout cancer, Sarah maintained her positive outlook, but she was painfully aware that her family were struggling to see her so ill.
“It’s almost worse for the people who have to watch because at least you go through it,” explains Sarah. “They just have to just stand by and impotently watch you.”
Telling her sons was a huge moment for Sarah – made easier by the humour of her boys Billy, 19, Charlie, 17, Rafferty, 15, and Laurie, 13. “I did it very quickly,” says Sarah.
“In fact, my son walked into the kitchen and he said, ‘God, Mum, what’s wrong? Have you got cancer or something?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I have actually.’ He says it not very often as a joke. Then he just went, ‘Are you going to die?’ and I said, ‘No, I’m not going to die.’ And he said, ‘Would you tell me if you were?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ And he went, ‘OK, cool.’"
Anyone who’s watched Sarah’s property shows will know that she needs – more than likes – to fix things. When she couldn’t fix her cancer, she decided to make a documentary about it to give herself something to focus on. The result is Sarah Beeny Vs Cancer, which airs on Channel 4 on Monday 12 June.
“I couldn’t find a solution to cancer because I’m not a doctor, but I could find a solution to how I felt about having cancer and that was making a documentary and sharing it with everyone else,” says Sarah. “That was my way of solving the problem.”
The result is an honest, unflinching look at how Sarah and her family faced her diagnosis together.
On the show Sarah tells the cameras, “I’m not going to die. I’ve got a whole life. I am needed. I’ve got four children. People need a mother, because the truth is, I needed my mother.”
The first thing Sarah wanted to do before she started chemotherapy was cut her trademark blonde locks off before they fell out. Sarah didn’t go through the sadness of cutting off her hair alone – her four sons helped her and saved the strands to donate to a wig-making charity that helps children who have cancer. Sarah says, “With my amount of hair you could make a wig for a small child.”
Having her own diagnosis brought back a lot of pain from losing her mum at such a young age, and this time, Sarah felt she had to face it. “It definitely all came out. I was like, ‘Oh God, do I have to deal with all that stuff?’ I had swept it nicely under the carpet where all my s**t belongs,” she says. “Graham calls it ‘Sarah therapy’. It’s called lifting up the carpet, sweeping it under, putting it back down, pretending it’s not there.”
Losing a beloved parent is traumatic, but Sarah has always felt grateful for the time she did have with her mum.
“When you’re a child and you lose someone, you live with that and you don’t understand at the time,” says Sarah. “You live with it always, but I do feel really strongly that I had a mother for 10 years. Some people don’t have a mother at all. People often focus on the dead bit, but it’s the alive bit that matters, isn’t it? I knew that before, but I feel it even more now.”
Sarah Beeny Vs Cancer sees her track down her mum’s medical records and find out something incredible and comforting when she meets Professor Michael Baum. The leading surgical oncologist tells her that her mum Ann was a pioneer who took part in experimental trials for chemotherapy to help scientists develop the drugs that have saved her daughter’s life 40 years later.
“In many ways my mother died and she didn’t meet her grandchildren so that I can meet my grandchildren,” marvels Sarah. “You couldn’t write it. It’s like it’s not true. People will watch it and think, ‘She’s made all that up! There’s no way that could actually happen.’ I promise it’s true.”
Now she’s walked in her mother’s shoes, Sarah can understand a little of how she must have felt.
“I recognise that the thing worse for my mother than having cancer would have been if I’d had cancer,“ says Sarah. “And the thing worse for me than having cancer would be if my kids had cancer. So I’m really grateful that it’s me, not my kids, and I’m really grateful to my mum that she went through it, and grateful to all those people who died and therefore they’ve done all this amazing treatment and I will see my grandchildren. Mum didn’t see hers.”
After she finished her life-saving chemotherapy, Sarah underwent a double mastectomy. Doctors had diagnosed her with a breast cancer gene called PALB2, which means she had a higher chance of a relapse or of a new lump appearing in her healthy breast.
“I have a higher risk of getting cancer again and then I have a higher risk of getting it in my other boob,” explains Sarah. “So the logic went like this… because I’m PALB2 it’s a 50% chance that I’d get cancer in my other boob, but because of that they would closely screen me. It would be caught early and I’d just have to go through chemo all over again and another mastectomy and I kind of thought, ‘Or you could just do it while I’m asleep?’ Chemo has not been that bad, but it’s not exactly been a laugh.”
After her mastectomy, Sarah had reconstructive surgery, which she describes as “like restuffing a cushion”.
“I don’t think I’d have had a mastectomy as a preventative measure. I’d just have been super, super careful,” says Sarah.
Of her reconstructed boobs, she says, “They’re pretty similar to the old ones. They just took the old ones out of the inside and stuck some new innards in. It’s like re-stuffing a cushion apart from the fact that these ones feel a bit like memory foam and when you lie down they don’t fall to the sides at all. They just stay there like Belisha beacons.”
She’s never lost her sense of humour throughout, but Sarah admits the mastectomy was harder than she thought.
“It is painful,” says Sarah. “And it’s a much longer recovery than I realised. They take out all the breast tissue and you’ve got breast tissue under your arms so your sides hurt. They took some lymph glands to test, which were luckily all clear, but where they were taken out I got a really bad infection. I ended up back in hospital.”
Surgery and chemotherapy complete, Sarah is looking to the future and she’s excited about going to Glastonbury this month to see her husband and sons play in their band The Entitled Sons.
“I consider this to be the end point,” says Sarah. “I’ll be taking drugs for the next five to 10 years but I need this to be the end. I need it to be the end for me and for the kids and Graham. We just need to get on with having fun and enjoying every day.”
Watching her husband and sons play at Glastonbury is just the start of that. One song Sarah will be listening out for is These Days, written for Sarah when she was battling cancer, and which plays over the credits of her documentary. It will also be released as a single to raise money for Stand Up to Cancer.
“All my children annoy me and my husband, but they have moments of being nice and one of them was doing that song,” laughs Sarah. “It’s very, very cool. Music is the way they speak, that’s how they talk. It’s the way they express themselves.”
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