Play all audios:
Loose Women star Brenda Edwards has issued a warning after a lump the “size of a pea” led to her cancer diagnosis. Brenda, 56, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016. She went through a
gruelling six months of treatment, which caused her to go into early menopause, before having a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Now cancer free, Brenda wants to encourage others to
know the warning signs to look out for. But insists she is feeling fine almost a decade on. Speaking to Woman magazine, she said: “My health is fabulous babe! I’m 10 years free of cancer.”
Brenda says she is now “just living her life”, although she hopes her story can help other people. She highlights breast cancer campaigns run by Loose Women, including one featuring Sarah
Ferguson. The Duchess of York teamed-up with the ITV show in 2023 to encourage women aged between 50-71 to attend their mammograms. Sarah opened up about her own breast-cancer diagnosis on
the show. Brenda says it was a friend opening up that led to her own diagnosis a decade ago. She told Woman: “It was after a conversation backstage with one of my friends who had just been
diagnosed, and I later discovered what felt like a lump the size of a pea on my breast when I was in the shower. “It shows we need to keep talking to each other about it. You think, ‘That
might be me,’ and decide to check.” Brenda says she is “very grateful” that the conversation led to the discovery. The star previously revealed she ignored the lump at first, putting it to
the back of her mind during a busy run starring as Motormouth Maybelle in Hairspray The Musical. But after noticing it again one day, she decided it was time to get checked by the doctor.
“When I first felt it, it was what I can only describe as a frozen pea,” she told OK!. “But this time it was more prominent. I immediately phoned my doctor and she referred me to my local
hospital to have a mammogram, which then turned into a biopsy, which was really hard and difficult and a very emotional time for me. “There was so much going on in my head, the first thing
at the forefront of my mind was my children and ‘what if?’ I’m usually a positive person, let’s be joyful, you know? And then there was this cloud over me. It was two weeks of waiting [for
the results] and that’s the worst two weeks of your life.” Brenda decided not to tell son Jamal or daughter Tanisha, and went to see a consultant alone. She says later telling them was “the
worst thing” and that the “colour drained from their faces” when she broke the news. A decade on, Brenda stresses the importance of speaking to your GP should you find a lump. She said: “You
owe it to yourself to take action. As scary as it is, you’ve got a much better chance of survival if it’s caught early. “Please don’t be scared to have that conversation. If you’re not
having a conversation with your GP, have a conversation with someone in your family or a friend and I guarantee that person will say the same thing I’m saying. Get yourself checked out and
get rid of the fear.”