TV host: Diagnosed with breast cancer exactly 40 years after my mum

WHEN she was aged just 10, Sarah Beeny’s mother passed away after a battle with breast cancer.

Almost exactly 40 years later, in August, 2022, Beeny herself discovered she had contracted the same disease.

The TV property expert documents her experience with the disease in Sarah Beeny Vs Cancer on Channel 4 on Monday June 12 at 9pm.

Three weeks after her diagnosis, Beeny’s treatment began - as did the filming of this documentary.

It’s a deeply personal journey through her own fight against a condition that results in around 1,000 deaths every month in the UK alone.

In the documentary, as she undergoes chemotherapy, Beeny, aged 51, explores past and present treatments, as well as what the future may hold for sufferers.

The programme documents the highs and lows of her treatment journey and even dives into how her family - husband Graham Swift and their four children, 18-year-old Billy, 16-year-old Charlie, 14-year-old Raffey and 12-year-old Laurie - felt during the difficult process.

“I’d lived with fear of cancer since my mother died... So I suppose, first of all, I started making the documentary largely because I thought it might help other people if they watched what I went through,” says Beeny.

“But also because I wanted to go on a journey where I sort of had something I wanted to find out, which is that cancer treatment was better than it used to be when my mother died. And then it was. So I was like, brilliant! That’s what I want to know. And the future is even better.

I was so scared of getting cancer, and now I’m not scared of cancer.

As Beeny delves into how the treatment process looked for her mother, she manages to get hold of her medical notes.

It’s a poignant moment, as she is able to see not only the details of her late mother’s treatment, but also letters written between doctors.

She also meets Professor Michael Baum, a surgeon now in his eighties who was a specialist in breast cancer care at the time of her mother’s treatment.

“It’s much more complicated,” Beeny says of modern treatments. “When my mum died, which was 40 years ago. One solution, do it, didn’t work, dead. That’s it.

“Now they’ve got DNA testing for you, DNA testing for the tumour, I was DNA tested, and now they make your treatment appropriate to the specific cancer you’ve got. It’s not one type of cancer, there’s loads of types of cancer.

“It’s amazing what they do... Now, it’s like making your own cocktail rather than just having to have, you know, red or white wine.”