HEARING the words, “You have cancer”, is understandably devastating.
But for Lauren Mahon, who was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 2016, aged only 31, she has come to see it as a positive.
The podcast host, who has launched a new range of bras with PrettyLittleThing for women who have had mastectomies, says: “Before my diagnosis, I was probably very unappreciative of life.
“I wouldn’t say ungrateful but I was comfortably numb, kind of meandering along.
“Life was happening to me, not for me. I just partied a lot.
“Everyone has a little career path but I wasn’t excited about it. I was just going through the motions.
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“But that shifted massively after my diagnosis.”
After discovering she had cancer, Lauren, now 37, searched online for advice from other young sufferers, but all she could find was information aimed at those over 50.
So she launched her own website, GIRLvsCANCER, where she began sharing her own stories.
Her aim was to create a space where young adults could feel comfortable discussing their own experiences of cancer.
Her lingerie line with PrettyLittleThing is designed by people who have had mastectomies for those recovering from mastectomies, as well as everyone else.
It is estimated that 15,000 of the 55,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the UK undergo a mastectomy.
In addition, women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation — making them more likely to get breast cancer — may choose to undergo a mastectomy, to greatly reduce the risk.
Yet post-surgery bras are still, for the most part, expensive and much less designer-led.
Lauren, who has gone through tough surgery and early menopause, says: “A lot of the girls I worked with are now in recovery, are stage fours, or they’re past that surgical phase.
“But they all said, ‘Just because I’ve had breast cancer doesn’t mean I want to wear these really ugly, really expensive bras’.
“If you want to get a really gorgeous bra that has room for prosthesis or thicker straps, or is built with a cancer patient in mind, they’re expensive.
“And I was just like, ‘this isn’t fair’.
“Why are we paying a premium because we’ve had a few mutated cells? It’s not right.
“I’m not trying to sexualise breast cancer — that’s not what we’re doing at all.
“This collection is called Awaken, because we’re trying to awaken that sense of sexual prowess in the cancer community.
“These women just feel so dehumanised and so desexualised after a cancer diagnosis and I think it’s really important that we allow these people to spark that back up, because they’re so young.
“You can’t put yourself out to pasture this young — no way.”
Awaken is the first of three lingerie collections that GIRLvsCANCER is releasing with PrettyLittleThing over the next year.
Lauren wanted the launches staggered so people would be reminded to check their breasts and pecs regularly.
“I think the problem we have is that people don’t check their breasts because they’re scared of what they’ll find,” she says.
“And also, we all make this big song and dance about self-examination like, ‘This is what to check for, these are the signs of breast cancer’.
“Actually, the message should be, ‘You need to be rubbing and looking at all of your breast tissue — whether you’ve got big boobs, little ones, or barely any, it doesn’t matter’
“We need to know our bodies so that if something changes we are empowered to go to a doctor and seek out some kind of support.”
Lauren first thought her lump was a cyst and went to a walk-in centre because she did not have a GP at the time, having just moved house.
She says: “They said to me, ‘We’re sure there’s nothing wrong, it’s unlikely to be anything, you’re young’, and said I needed to be referred by my GP.
“You’re not going to rush back after that, are you? I was taking my time.”
It was her mum who encouraged her to go to the doctor in the end, where she received her stage three diagnosis.
But Lauren says: “I don’t regret putting it off, because it didn’t end up changing the outcome of my disease — but it could have.”
Lauren was given the all-clear in 2017, but that does not stop her worrying, especially as she has lost good friends she made in the cancer community along the way.
These include Dame Deborah James, who died aged 40 in June this year.
She and Bowel Babe Deborah presented You, Me and the Big C with Rachael Bland, who also passed away aged 40 in 2018.
Lauren says: “I feel good. I mean, I think there’s always a devil on your shoulder, isn’t there?
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“I don’t think anyone could sit pretty after a cancer diagnosis and not worry at all.
“And obviously, there are very sad realities of it.”
