Marion Sauvebois meets artist and mother Sally Thain who has breast cancer

EXAMINING her sunburnt cleavage, Sally Thain scolded herself: she really should have been more careful.

As she ran her fingers across her chest, stroking the inflamed patch of skin, they caught a small ridge. There was a lump in her right breast.

Were it not for this opportune lapse nine years ago, the invasive tumour may not have been picked up in time.

“I remember touching it and it just felt wrong, like something was out of place on one side,” says the mother-of-five from Moredon.

“I hadn’t felt it before. If hadn’t had a sunburn, if I had waited until I was 50 for a mammogram I would not be here.”

Doing her best not to rush to conclusions, she booked an appointment with her GP. Two weeks later a biopsy confirmed her worst fears: she had breast cancer.

“When you find out, it’s a shock,” she recalls pensively. “It’s like you’re grieving. Once you hear the word cancer you think you’re going to die. It’s a death sentence.

“I’d lost two friends to breast cancer, one didn’t make it to 40 and the other didn’t make it to 50.

“I remember one of the nurses saying to me, ‘You’re not listening, are you?’ I said no. I just wanted to get out of there.”

Six weeks after first noticing a swelling in her breast, Sally, then 42, underwent surgery to remove the tumour.

The cancerous cells had already begun to spread to the lymph nodes and she had reached stage two. Had the cancer been spotted just a few weeks later it may have been too late to save her.

“I asked what my chances were and they said I had 80 per cent of surviving but the way I heard it was, ‘you’ve got 20 per cent chance of not being here’,” says the artist candidly.

“Everything they said always came out negatively for me. You hear what you want to hear. They can’t promise you everything is going to be OK.”

Sally, who was due to enrol on an art degree, was forced to put her plans on hold to embark on four gruelling months of chemotherapy.

In January 2007, she started radiotherapy at John Radcliffe Hospital, travelling five days a week to Oxford for just 10 minutes of treatment each time.

The debilitating bouts of sickness, exhaustion and a catalogue of draining side-effects took a tremendous toll, and yet throughout, Sally vowed never to be hindered by the disease or allow it to disrupt her family life. She would always be a mother first, a patient second.

“I’m the matriarch, I keep everything ticking,” adds the 53-year-old with a warm smile.

“The fact that I had children kept me going.

“As a mother you feel stronger. When I came back from treatment I would hang the washing out, do the laundry. I just wanted to be normal and I wanted the kids to think everything was normal.”

And yet despite her unflagging resolve to maintain a semblance of normalcy, the relentless illness pervaded every area of her existence.

Losing her hair, being stared at or pitied at every turn, she felt downgraded, relegated from ‘human being’ to ‘cancer patient’. Regardless of her efforts the world only saw the ravages of the disease.

“Sometimes the cancer takes over,” she sighs.

“A lot is taken away. People see the cancer not the person anymore. When you lose your hair you don’t feel feminine anymore and people stare at you.

“I remember being on the bus and someone tried to look under my bandana to see I was bald underneath. You always get people say ‘poor you’. When all you want is to be treated as normal. I just wanted to get on with my life.”

She eventually entered remission and was fully discharged in 2011.

She is currently on hormone therapy to block oestrogen, which tumours feed on, in a bid to keep the risk of cancer returning at bay.

A mother first and always, being put through menopause before her time and once again, yielding yet another aspect of her femininity, was another setback.

“Being discharged after five years was such a relief. I was just me — mum and nanny. I was no longer a cancer patient.

“I had decided I didn’t want any more children but I still had the option,” says Sally who picked up her spot on the University of Bath fine art bachelors at Swindon College a year after being diagnosed.

“I love being a mum and having your choice, your agency, taken away from you is very hard.”

Throughout treatment art became Sally’s crutch, a means to stand up to cancer and an outlet to exorcise and silence her fears and doubts.

Before her hair started to fall out, she decided to take back control and pre-empt the disease.

She had it cut short and froze the act in time, collecting the strands as they fell on a large sheet of paper and fixing each to the the surface with paint.

The piece, titled Final Cut, was exhibited alongside a string of her artworks at the Brunel in October as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

“When I was diagnosed a friend came to the house with a bunch of flowers and said to me, ‘you’re still you.’ She inspired me not to give in and be myself.

“So rather than let my hair fall out I cut it short and recorded it, let the hair fall on a piece of paper and seal it.”

While now effectively in the clear, Sally is forever on the alert, probing any fleeting pain, or benign ache.

“Every time you have anything wrong you think, 'that’s it, it’s back.’ Last year I had ill health so I had a scan and it turned out to be gall stones. I was so relieved. It’s something I’ll always have to live with. It’s part of who I am now.”

Surviving a disease which claims the lives of nearly 12,000 people each year prompted Sally to reassess her priorities and live for the present.

“I live for now not the future. Now I get something out of every day. I don’t value possessions; I value time. It’s the most precious thing we’ve got.”