Former PE teacher and sports enthusiast Janet Blackburn was 45 when diagnosed with breast cancer 17 years ago. Today, at 62, she is not only alive and well but still playing hockey and tennis and awaiting the birth of her first grandchild. In Breast Cancer Awareness Month she tells her story to Hilarie Stelfox

NO-ONE walks away from a diagnosis of breast cancer without fearing the worst.

But, as 62-year-old Janet Blackburn discovered nearly two decades ago, the Big C is not necessarily a death sentence. Life-changing perhaps, but not unbeatable.

The former PE teacher from Outlane has agreed to tell her story in Breast Cancer Awareness Month because it is one that gives hope to others.

Janet said: “The reaction at the time you get the diagnosis is ‘why me?’ I think everyone feels that way.

“I considered myself to be very healthy. I wasn’t overweight and I did a lot of sport.”

Such is the random nature of breast cancer that to this day Janet doesn’t know why it chose her.

In fact, it was only a matter of chance that she discovered she had a tumour at all. Although she had been feeling unwell for some time and had endured a series of tests, even heart-monitoring, she never once suspected she had cancer.

It was only when her son Aidan, then aged 10, surprised her while she was taking a bath that she found a lump. “He just burst into the bathroom and I covered myself up with my hands the way you do,” she said. “I could feel a lump just under my right breast.

“Straight away I knew what it was and I had the answer to why I had been feeling so ill.”

“I owe my life to my son.”

Doctors thought Janet had been experiencing some severe peri-menopausal symptoms and she now believes that these extreme hormone changes might have triggered the cancer, but she will never know for sure.

Her surgeon, Richard Sainsbury, told her the cancer had been growing for about six months by the time he operated to remove it.

Because it had not spread to the nearby lymph nodes – 12 were removed at the time of the lumpectomy – Janet had radiotherapy but no chemotherapy.

She said: “I was considered borderline for chemotherapy and took part in a study in which women were randomly selected to have the treatment or not have it and I was one of those who didn’t get it.”

The cancer was considered to be only moderately aggressive but, as a precaution, Janet was given Tamoxifen which lowers oestrogen levels in the body. This is because some tumours are hormone sensitive.

At the time of her treatment Janet was working full-time as the vice principal of a community college in Pontefract. She previously taught at Huddersfield High School, Fartown High and Howden Clough High School in Batley. Her children – she also has a daughter Alex, now 30 – were just 10 and 13.