A CANCER survivor has had both of her breasts removed - in a desperate bid to stay alive for her two young sons.

 

Leeanne Curry made the life-changing decision to have a double mastectomy when tests revealed she had a faulty gene that left her with an 89 per cent chance of her cancer returning.

It was after watching sons, Jake, 10, and Rhys, four, laughing and having fun on a family holiday, she knew she had to rid the burden of cancer hanging over her.

"It was a ticking time-bomb," she said.

"I realised that my breasts had no purpose any more and I just wanted them off and be done with it."

Miss Curry, from Drumnadrochit, Inverness-shire, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in June 2012.

She beat the disease after 16 rounds of chemotherapy over six months and spent two years contemplating her options, before having the six-hour operation on January 5.

Surgeons also removed the 36-year-old's ovaries in a bid to reduce her chances of the disease returning, as the rouge gene is linked to both breast and ovarian cancers.

Miss Curry, who refused reconstruction surgery and implants, said: "I was an H cup and I did think before the surgery, 'how am I going to be able to look at myself?

"But I feel amazing and proud that I've done all I can to prevent it coming back.

"Just to know I can be there for my family is what it is all about. My boys are everything to me and everything I've had done is for them.

"I'd lose my legs for my children. Any mother would do the same in my position.

"I don't need a pair of boobs but my children need me."

Miss Curry only discovered she had the disease after her ex-partner mentioned his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

She said: "After he said that I went away and had a feel and I thought I felt something.

"I was 34 and had never checked my breasts in my life. I had no reason to. But they [doctors] reckon I had the tumour for about 18 months and if it had been left another six months it would have spread.

"I maintain if he hadn't told me about his mother I would be dead."

When Miss Curry went to the doctors her tumour was already 4in x 3.5in.

Nine days later she had the lump removed, followed by the chemotherapy.

Miss Curry said: "I still have the gene. But now I am no more at risk of getting cancer than anybody else.

"Cancer will always be there, I will never forget about it, but now it's at the back of my mind and not at the forefront."