AS Amanda Featherstone prepared for her fifth breast cancer op in two years, she never dreamed that just four years later she would be posing as a lingerie model. The personal assistant has been photographed in a new Marks & Spencer bra range aimed at women who have had mastectomies - and she is delighted with the results.She says: "I couldn't believe something so lovely had come out of my worst-ever experience. Posing for the shoot, I felt feminine and sexy. "My husband always said I still looked sexy and when I saw the pictures, I believed him." The mum-of-two was only 34 when she discovered a lump in her breast after her two-year-old, Hannah, prodded her cleavage. Amanda, now 40, says: "I looked at what my little girl was touching and couldn't see anything. inside of my left breast, I then felt a pea-sized lump. I was terrified. "I hadn't been checking myself for lumps but I called the doctor for the earliest appointment. "I told my husband, Chris, and he looked sick with worry but assured me it was probably a cyst - and I wanted to believe him."
After an examination by her GP, Amanda, was sent to the Princess Royal University Hospital, in Farnborough, Kent, and given tests including a biopsy of the lump. Ten days later she was diagnosed with breast cancer at Sloane Hospital in nearby Beckenham. Amanda, of Farnborough, says: "I looked at Chris's stunned face and felt my stomach drop. I thought, 'I can't have cancer, I'm a mum.'
"Was I going to be there to watch Hannah and her seven-year-old sister Isabelle grow up?" Doctors were confident that a lumpectomy op (to cut out the lump) then radiotherapy would remove the cancer. The surgery went well, Amanda's scar was healing and she was waiting to start radiotherapy when, in May 2003, she found another lump, on the other side of the same boob. It was cancerous and Amanda was told she would not undergo radiotherapy but would need her left breast removed.
She recalls: "I panicked. I thought I'd never feel feminine and sexy again, though Chris assured me it wouldn't change the way he felt about me." Two weeks later Amanda was booked into the Princess Royal University Hospital for a mastectomy followed by breast reconstruction.
Muscle was taken from her back and remoulded into her left breast, together with a silicone and saline implant. She says: "In bandages for a week after the op, I was in agony and feared what my breasts would look like. "But as the dressings came off, my boobs looked great, all symmetrical. I was over the moon." But in November 2004 she found yet another lump, this time above her breast implant, and was again diagnosed with cancer then given a lumpectomy and radiotherapy.
She says: "It was a hard time." Afterwards, she wanted to raise awareness about breast cancer and appeared in a women's magazine. It was then she got a call from breast cancer charity Breakthrough, telling her Marks & Spencer wanted her to model for them. And with the campaign a huge success, she is excited about what's in store for her. She says: "Now who knows what the future may hold? Maybe more modelling?"
