I needed to get rid of it for the children... whatever I had to do

"IT was surreal, it still is," says Hayley Lovesey, her voice dipping to a whisper at the sound of the front door slamming open. One of her sons peers into living room, waving a shy hello before disappearing down the hall again. Hayley pauses, listening as the steps edge away.

"When they said I had breast cancer, I just kept thinking my children were not going to have a mum," continues the mother-of-five from Royal Wootton Bassett. "I needed to get rid of it for the children, whatever I had to do."

Hayley was just 35 when she felt a lump under her right breast stretching one Sunday morning in November 2013. A week before Christmas she was ushered into a consultant's office at the Great Western Hospital and told she had Grade 3 triple negative ductal carcinoma, an aggressive form of breast cancer.

She was stunned.

She had been warned to expect the worst following an ultrasound and biopsy, yet nothing could have prepared her for such a final diagnosis.

"Waiting to find out was awful but I tried to carry on as normal for my children," recalls the teaching assistant and Better Together coordinator. "The surgeon had said he was 80 per cent sure that it was going to come back as cancer. So I had got it in my head that was going to be the outcome. I was trying to prepare myself. But when I found out I felt numb. It was like they were talking to somebody else. I took me a while to understand what it meant. I still wonder now what brought it on. There’s no family history at all. "

Triple negative breast cancer means that the three most common types of receptors known to fuel most breast cancer growth– oestrogen, progesterone, and the HER-2– are not present in the cancer tumour. So common treatments like hormone therapy and the targeted therapy drug Herceptin are ineffective.

Treatment would begin after Christmas, she was told. As the cancer had been detected in its early stages she stood a fair chance of survival.

Still reeling from the diagnosis, she was faced with the harrowing prospect of breaking the news to her children. She told her two eldest. She kept it from her three younger children, one of whom was still a toddler at the time, until after the holidays. Slapping on a smile each day and going through the motions, ohing and ahing with them as they unwrapped their presents, unable to silence her fears this may be her last Christmas, was unbearable.

"You think everything could be the last time," she adds pensive. "I spent more than I should have. I really wanted to make it memorable for them. Watching them open their presents thinking, 'Will I see this again?' was very difficult.

"It was very hard on my son, who’s ten years old now. He struggled most when I told them after Christmas. He would cry at bedtime that he was going to get cancer or that I was going to die. It hit him the worst. I had to keep smiling and telling him it was going to be OK.”

Because of her young age and good health surgeons were able to "throw everything at the cancer”.

In January, she underwent a lumpectomy, during which the tumour and some surrounding tissue were removed.

Less than two months later she embarked on an aggressive course of chemotherapy. It took its toll immediately and made her violently sick. Within 14 days her hair began falling out in clumps.

Her response to the treatment and hair loss deeply affected her children. In a bid to reassure them and play down her ordeal in their eyes, she enlisted her three youngest boys to shave her head.

The simple act of shearing her thinning locks was hugely empowering, she explains.

"It actually felt quite good," says the 38-year-old. "I felt like I was taking control. I couldn't bear seeing it fall out. The boys were a bit sad and my daughter didn't want to do it at all, she hid upstairs. But I wanted them to be involved. I thought it would not be as scary for them if they could see it coming off."

A month later, her daughter Eloise, now 15, took her courage with both hands and shaved her own hair in an emotional show of support for Hayley, raising £2,700 for Breast Cancer Care in the process. She donated her hair to The Little Princess Trust.

As the family slowly settled into their new routine and the ebb and flow of chemotherapy, Hayley caught a simple cold which spiralled and caused her blood cell count to plummet. She was diagnosed with plancytopenia and neutropenic sepsis and hospitalised for a week. Receiving her sixth and final dose of chemotherapy in her state was out of the question.

"The children had to gown up to come and see me in hospital which upset them a lot,” says the mother of Joshua, 17, Eloise, 15, Jaxson, 11, Lewis, 10 and Isaac, eight.

Finally on her feet after a protracted recovery, she contacted her surgeon determined to follow through with her plan of having a bilateral mastectomy to ensure the cancer would not return.

However her consultant at GWH refused, explaining the procedure was not necessary. She sought a second opinion for RUH in Bath where a surgeon agreed to perform the procedure for the sake of her mental wellbeing.

“I wanted to do everything I could to stop it coming back,” she says firmly. “I just knew what I had to do. If I hadn’t had the double mastectomy, I would have fretted all the time. It’s the uncertainly,” she trails off.

She underwent a mastectomy and reconstruction on her birthday, January 8, 2015.

“Deciding to do it was easy but the recovery was hard,” she confides. “I was in a lot of pain. But having the mastectomy and reconstruction at the same time was so helpful. I felt I was finally getting me back.”

Although she is now in remission, the shadow of cancer still hangs over the family, she admits.

“If the children hear me talking quickly or if I don’t tell them who I’m texting they think, ‘Oh no, mummy’s ill again’. I have to watch how I am all the time.

“And there’s still a chance of it coming back somewhere else. It’s always at the back of my mind. If my ribs hurt or I feel a lump, I think it’s back. It’s happens less but it doesn’t disappear.”

While a part of her will always be on the alert, since her brush with cancer she has been amazed at her strength to face adversity and resilience.

“This is a new normal now and I’m not the person I was before,” she says, quietly determined. “I’m less afraid now and I want to live more.

“It makes you realise how short and how precious life actually is and I try to live every day I’m given.”

Hayley is supporting Breast Cancer Now. For more information about the charity or to make a donation go to breastcancernow.org.