JO Garton owes her life to Facebook.

If she had not remembered seeing a post detailing the many symptoms of breast cancer she may not have spotted the disease in time.

It was Christmas Eve three years ago and for the first time in weeks she had a few minutes to herself.

She’d been run ragged dealing with “tinsel time” at Bridlewood Primary School where she was the head teacher and helping her husband care for his elderly mother.

But as she looked at herself in the mirror she noticed a puckered area of skin on her chest.

She remembered a Facebook post a friend had put up showing signs to look for with breast cancer – the kind of post she didn’t really like seeing and knew immediately something wasn’t right.

She saw her GP as soon as possible after Christmas and was given a hospital appointment in the first week of term.

An ultrasound and a mammography followed and the operator told her she needed a biopsy. She also said she was pretty sure it was cancer.

It was Jo’s worst fear but it was still a massive shock. “It can’t be. I’ve got and 18-year-old and a 16-year-old. It can’t be cancer,” was her first reaction.

The operator insisted: “I’m sorry but it is.”

Jo’s friend, who had been waiting with her, took her home to tell her husband Chris and children Ella and Tom. She also had to break the news to her deputy and work out what to tell the parents.

And then she had the wait until the surgery. During the days she had plenty of distractions, but at night the fears came crowding in.

“You don’t know whether you have got one little bit of whether you’re absolutely riddled with it,” she said. “I just couldn’t sleep and probably my biggest talent in life up to that point was sleeping.”

She worried what would happen to Chris and the children if she died.

As it turned out she was very lucky. She only needed a lumpectomy, although the lymph nodes under her arm were also removed just to help prevent the spread of the disease.

The wait for the follow-up appointment to hear the result was excruciating in more ways than one. The tumour had grown into her pectoral muscle and she was in searing agony every timed she moved her arm.

Undergoing radiotherapy to make sure no malignant cells had been missed meant a trip to Oxford. She had friends happy to take her but she saw others suffering the effects of a long bus journey followed by a wait - particularly among men suffering from prostate cancer who had to keep their bladders full for treatment. It was one of the reasons she became a supporter of the Brighter Futures appeal.

She managed to avoid chemotherapy and was in a good frame of mind. But a meeting with a consultant sent her spirits plummeting by asking her how likely she thought she was to die within five years and suggesting she have chemo.

“By the time I came out I was thinking the odds weren’t good. I was in a right state,” she said.

However the consultant had told her about a genetic test that could analyse the tumour and show how likely it was to come back. The results revealed it was hormone-related and she could be treated with Tamoxifen.

The side effects were a full on menopause. She also suffers from lymphedema in her arm. But against that, she is alive and since the diagnosis has been able to take stock of life.

“I have a much better relationship with my husband because we know we nearly lost each other.”

She said her children were brilliant but her son suffered badly with stress and only now at the age of 19 is he recovering.

Ella is now at university and doing a masters degree researching genetics. “The boom area in genetics is cancer,” said Jo. “I wonder if she would have done that if her mum hadn’t had cancer.”

And these days if she sees another post on Facebook about breast cancer symptoms she remembers: “Facebook saved my life.”