Sarah Beeny 'less scared of cancer' after double mastectomy and future surgeries
Having had a double mastectomy to treat her own breast cancer and losing her mother to the same disease, you would imagine the dreaded C-word would be, well, even more dreaded for Sarah Beeny. But somehow, the opposite is true for the TV presenter and homes guru.
“A lot of people say to me that I must be a different person now, after having cancer,” she says. “But no, I’m exactly the same person, just with shorter hair I’m less scared of cancer. It’s just a thing, it’s over now and I’m moving on. I think we need to talk about and celebrate cancer survivors more too. I’m lucky. I had a lucky diagnosis. I’m lucky to live in the UK, lucky to have the NHS.”
That luck is something the 51-year-old is hoping to have shared with others after discovering a gene mutation which made her more likely to get the disease, prompting her decision to undergo a double mastectomy rather than a single.
Her results – negative for the widely known BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene, but positive for PALB2 – had wider implications for her children and potential future grandchildren, as well as for her siblings and wider family.
The Simple Life: How I Found Home by Sarah Beeny is published by Seven Dials and £20 in hardback. Also available in eBook and audio
Sarah had a double mastectomy to treat her breast cancer (the_entitled_sons/Instagram)The gene meant she had a 50/50 chance of getting cancer in the future in the breast not already affected, up from around 14% for most people, and a 50/50 chance she’d passed it onto her children.
Sarah Beeny back in hospital amid cancer battle ahead of mastectomy surgery
Her brother Diccon tested negative, while her children haven’t yet tested. Sarah passed on the information to her aunt and cousins, so they too could decide if they wanted to know.
“I gave them the control, it’s up to them what they do with it,” she says. “It’s a very personal decision. I like the control, others may not want to know.”
Sarah also intends to have more surgery in the future. She writes in her new book The Simple Life: How I found Home: “PALB2 also gives me a marginal increased risk of ovarian cancer, it is only a small day surgery to remove your ovaries and, as I have had quite enough children and my ovaries are no longer functioning, I am due to have my ovaries removed too.”
This book tells the story of her life, and she is determined not to be defined by her cancer. “It’s just one thing in my life that’s over now,” she says. “I don’t want it to be the one thing that people think about me in 10 years’ time.”
Sarah, who is married to Graham and has four sons – Billy, Charlie, Rafferty and Laurie – lost her own mother to breast cancer when she was just 10 years old.
She recalls in the book: “Somehow, I hadn’t realised she had cancer. I was only four when she was diagnosed and my brother was six and it was a different era, but six years later, when she was 39, her breast cancer had spread to her brain.
“She passed away peacefully in my parents’ bed a few hours after she fell asleep to me reading her a book. Looking back, I realise I probably could have worked it out but somehow my mind didn’t let me. Day by day you just cope with things and whilst there is a sadness and loss that never leaves you, your life continues.”
It was seeing the effect on others that affected her deeply. “One of the hardest things was seeing my father afterwards, how hard it was for him,” says Sarah, who’s presented programmes including Property Ladder and Britain’s Best Homes.
“That’s the thing about breast cancer, people think it’s just a middle aged woman’s thing. It’s not, it’s worse for everyone around you, it really is a journey for all.”
Sarah admits she crammed as much as she could into her life before the age of 40, then began to feel she might have escaped the same fate. “Then I turned 50 last summer, I thought I was well out of the water,” she says in the book. “Until I was diagnosed with breast cancer about six months later. In some ways, I had planned it for 40 years.”
Sarah Beeny praised for 'reality of cancer post' after returning to hospital
She had chemotherapy, a mastectomy, radiotherapy and reconstruction. And now, as she makes clear, she views the cancer as something that’s behind her and she is moving on and looking to the future with her family.
Sarah is moving on and looking to the future with her family (INSTAGRAM)
Sarah had chemotherapy, a mastectomy, radiotherapy and reconstruction done (Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)They moved to a 220-acre former dairy farm in Somerset in 2019. Before that, they’d divided their time between their home in London and Rise Hall in East Yorkshire, a Grade II listed stately home which they renovated and also ran as a wedding venue.
It’s a far cry from Sarah’s first home, which she bought for £200 – a Simca van with flames on the bonnet and a lightning bolt on the side.
It was in this that she set off from Reading, Berkshire, for London to start her career in television with Property Ladder on Channel 4 in 2001. Sarah went on to present several other property shows such as Help! My House Is Falling Down and New Life In The Country.
But when the family moved into the old farmhouse, it was a long build. One Christmas, they ate in their coats in the dining room when the house was still a building site.
“But home is the people you share it with,” she smiles. “As long as the people you love are there, it’s home.”
And with thousands of parents waving goodbye to their children as they head off to university, Sarah admits she was relieved to have her eldest, Billy, 19, at home for a little longer. “Graham and the boys started a band, The Entitled Sons, last year,” she says. “They think everyone assumes they are entitled. But they really are brilliant and work hard. And when the band started to take off, Billy deferred going to university.”
Their song These Days claimed the number one spot on the Apple Top 10 chart, and all proceeds went to cancer research.
This summer, one of Sarah’s proudest moments came when The Entitled Sons performed at Glastonbury. “Oh my god!” she laughs, “It was amazeballs. I was a Glastonbury virgin, but it was just fantastic.”
While Billy is heading off to uni, Sarah says that because the band is on a roll, they are going to continue, which means she will still see him lots.
But she admits: “I understand how all the parents feel though, watching their children fly the nest. We didn’t build this house so we could be rattling around in it on our own! It’s harder knowing I’ll be watching the boys go off one by one. I’d rather them all go together."
If you have been affected by this story, advice and support can be found at Breast Cancer Support.
The Simple Life: How I Found Home by Sarah Beeny is published by Seven Dials and £20 in hardback. Also available in eBook and audio.
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