Cancer survivor Alison Hawkes has posed topless to show her mastectomy scars are nothing to be ashamed of after her husband treated her to a makeover.
A cancer survivor has posed for a topless photoshoot - proudly displaying her mastectomy scars.
Alison Hawkes bravely decided to bare all in a bid to show women everywhere that scars are nothing to be ashamed of.
The 39-year-old was first diagnosed with breast cancer in three years ago.
After undergoing a full mastectomy to prevent the disease from returning, her husband Ian, 52, treated her to a makeover and photo shoot.
She said: “I wanted to show everyone that scars aren’t the end of the world. I’m proud of what my body has beaten.
“I was reading down the list of types of photos that they do, and at the bottom it said topless and I just thought: ‘why not?'
“I uploaded the picture to Facebook. I was nervous at first, but I’ve got an amazing response.”
It was back in 2012 when Alison found a lump on her right breast.
Breast cancer is rife in her family, with every female on her father’s side having battled the illness at some point.
But, when doctors initially diagnosed the lump as a cyst, she thought she had nothing to worry about.
Then, she began to notice the mass swelling in size every time she was due to start her period.
She said: “At that point, I still thought it was a cyst, but even so, I didn’t want to deal with it doubling in size every time I was due on, so I went to the doctor’s to see if they could remove it."
Medics agreed to remove the mass and a biopsy revealed the devastating truth that she had stage 2 invasive lobular cancer.
She said: “Hearing that was like being punched in the stomach.
“What’s worse is that I was on my own. I didn’t think I’d be getting news that devastating, so I didn’t ask Ian to come to the hospital with me.
“He rang to check on me. I didn’t want to tell him over the phone, but he could tell by my voice that something wasn’t right
“As soon as I got home, he flung open the front door and we both just burst into tears.
“We cried for days, then I realised I couldn’t keep feeling sorry for myself. It was time to fight.”
In June 2012, a few weeks after her diagnosis, Alison had a single mastectomy on her right side.
Then, she underwent six rounds of chemotherapy.
She said: “Chemo hit me like a tonne of bricks.
“I’d felt fine up until that point, then suddenly I was nauseous. I had heartburn – it was like having flu times one hundred.
“That’s the first time I truly felt like a cancer patient.”
Within just two weeks, her long, dark hair began to dramatically thin but rather than wait for it to fall out entirely, she decided to take charge and cut it off herself.
She said: “My hair was the one thing I could control. There was nothing I could do about chemo, or cancer, but I could choose to cut my hair before it fell out.
“I kept asking Ian to cut it, but he didn’t want to. We put it off for days until I finally said, ‘You do it, or I will,’ so he agreed.
“He said that was one of the hardest things – cutting off his wife’s hair.”
Doctors have advised Alison that they can never give her a definite all-clear, because of the type of cancer she has.
But, after her last course of chemotherapy, they were confident that there was no trace of the disease left in her body but doctors warned that, due to her family history, she was still at a high risk of the disease returning.
With this in mind, she made the courageous decision to undergo a prophylactic mastectomy, to remove the breast, on her left side.
She said: “It was a no brainer. I didn’t even consider the aesthetic side of things.
“All I could think was that there was no way I was going through this again – not if I could help it.”
She now wears a bra specially fitted with prosthetic breasts so that, outwardly, her appearance does not seem different.
But, during her photoshoot, she chose to shed her top, celebrating her scars and all that her body has been through.
Whilst recovering from the surgery, Mrs Hawkes decided to set up a blog called Mastectomy Girl, aimed at reaching out to other young breast cancer patients.
