Sarah, Duchess of York describes mastectomy as a ‘badge of office’
In past interviews, Sarah said she had no symptoms and almost missed her mammogram until her sister convinced her to go.
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Your support makes all the difference.Sarah, Duchess of York described her mastectomy as a “badge of office” as she was praised for being a positive role model for women.
Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain (GMB), she highlighted her fears around having surgery and spoke about “Derek” – her name for her reconstructed left breast.
Earlier this year, the 64-year-old had an eight-hour single mastectomy operation and reconstruction after discovering she had an early form of breast cancer during a routine mammogram.
In previous interviews, Sarah said she had no symptoms and almost missed her mammogram until her sister convinced her to go – with the cancer luckily not spreading to her lymph nodes.
She told GMB hosts Ed Balls and Susanna Reid: “I’m sorry to be so quite bold, if I may say, but this is Derek. It could be Dereka and it could be they. I’m talking about my left breast.
“I’m really proud of it. I feel that my mastectomy is like a badge of office.”
Sarah described the moment she decided to have her breast removed as she drove away from the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, north London, and began searching for information about the disease on the internet.
“Of course you look it up and you go on medical (websites) and it tells you all these different things and eventually I was so silent and I went right into my fears,” she said.
Balls told the late Queen’s former daughter-in-late how her story encouraged his co-host Reid to have a mammogram.
He said: “Your courage to speak about it encouraged other people to think, ‘Actually, if Sarah can do this so can I’.”