I found a lump the size of a pine nut. It turned out to be an aggressive tumour

The breast cancer charity founder talks about her own diagnosis, the impact of reconstructive surgery and the power of walking

What people don’t tell you about breast cancer: in honour of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we will be talking to people who have been affected by the disease – from a survivor to a widower to a fundraiser. Meet the final person in our series, Nina Barough CBE who is founder and chief executive at Walk The Walk, a charity that has raised £142 million for breast cancer causes since 1996. A breast cancer survivor herself, she gives her best piece of advice on reconstructive surgery and the power of activity.
I was very young when I was diagnosed – only 41. It was a time when cancer was really the C word. You didn’t talk about it. It was something that you didn’t think you were going to survive.
I didn’t know anyone with breast cancer and I didn’t know anything about it.
But the year before, in 1996, I had started the first Walk the Walk in New York where I got people to walk a marathon in their bras to raise money for charity. I just had the idea one morning waking up from a dream. I was working as a stylist with lots of photographers and make-up artists and so all the people that took part and joined me were equally up for something crazy – plus we all wanted a weekend in New York. There were only 13 of us and we raised £25,000.
Six weeks later I was in the shower and I suddenly felt this lump. It was so tiny, like a little pine nut, or a tiny dried pea. Had I not been doing the fundraising, I would have just thought it was just one of those things, but because my awareness was so heightened I wanted to see a doctor straight away. 
It turned out I had a grade three aggressive tumour. I had to have a mastectomy and I had a reconstruction done at the same time, which I would recommend to anyone if they’re in that situation. Waking up with a breast, albeit a reconstruction, is much better than waking up and suddenly not having anything.
I knew that when I went to get the test results it would be breast cancer. I just knew it and I dissolved. Most people see me as a confident person but after the surgery, I couldn’t bear to look at my body for about nine months. Losing my breast had a huge impact; in a way, I dealt better with having cancer.
I lost a lot of weight when I was going through my treatment. And then, of course, when they did the reconstruction, they gave me the size that suited me with a lot less weight. But then I went back to my normal size and now I have this lovely breast that is sort of trapped in time, because it’s a lot smaller than my other one. I’ve gone through the last 20 odd years with this. So I do think it’s a good idea to think how much you normally weigh and what size you normally weigh when you have a reconstruction. 
If you look at all the messaging that’s put out it’s about “check, check, check” for early detection, but the problem that I see, and I even have it with myself and I’ve been through it, is that I think there’s also an innate part of you that doesn’t really want to check because you don’t want to find anything.  And even though I’ve only got one breast, I still don’t really like checking it – although of course I do.
I’ve never really got away from it because every day I’m running a breast cancer charity.  At Walk the Walk now we run fundraising challenges all over the world, from Moon Walks (walking marathons at night) to marathons and treks.
Nowadays the big part of our mission at Walk the Walk is about prevention. Because, of course, now we’ve got the scientific evidence that shows being active and other lifestyle choices have a huge impact on the risk of breast cancer. The World Cancer Research Fund statistics say 27 per cent of breast cancers could be avoided with lifestyle changes, and one of the biggest is being active. 
Walking actually supports the whole body and that’s what I love about it. It’s so accessible: provided you can walk, it doesn’t matter how far you go. To anybody reading this article, don’t wait until that magical day when you go, “Right today, I’m going to start walking”. Just walk up and down stairs straight away. And I would say to people come and Walk the Walk with us. It’s really important that we continue putting the message out there, because wouldn’t it be much better to prevent people getting breast cancer than trying to treat it?
When somebody is diagnosed, all their friends and family rally around and then as soon as they’ve gone through treatment, quite innocently, people tend to think “oh, thank goodness for that” and they drop away. But that is often the most difficult time, because you’ve got to launch back out into normal life, and yet you feel anything but normal. That’s why post-treatment care is so important, to help people learn to live with what they’ve been through.
As told to Miranda McMinn