“I met the love of my life while fighting cancer”
Like most single 25-year-olds living in London, Annie Belasco was splitting her time working long hours and partying super hard. And, while meeting men was high on her list of priorities, it wasn’t quite working out for her. “Trying to find a boyfriend was an absolute nightmare. So, I threw myself into a lifestyle with my circle of girl friends where we habitually got out of work and went straight to the pub… And then clubbing,” Annie, now 34, tells me.
“I had a very unhealthy lifestyle and didn’t sleep enough. I smoked, I drank, and I constantly used electronic sun beds because I was very conscious of how I looked. I very much aspired to look like Katy Price and those reality TV stars. I wanted my hair longer, and my boobs bigger.”
So that summer, after booking a girls trip to Benidorm, Annie was trying to ‘build up’ her tan using sun beds. “I bought one of those packages of sessions. The salon was just outside of my work, so I’d hop out at lunch time.” When it came to the week before her holiday, she was going every day.
A post shared by Annie Belasco -writer (@loveandremission) on Oct 1, 2017 at 11:34am PDT
Discovering a lump
“One day I was having a shower after my session, when I touched my breast and felt a hard lump. It was quite alarming because it was the size of a golf ball, and I could fit my whole hand under it. I’d only really noticed it because my skin was really red.”
She saw her doctor immediately, who told her there was “no way in hell” she could have breast cancer at 25. But, he agreed to book her in for a mammogram and biopsy, so she could collect the results when she returned from her holiday.
Although she tried to forget about it while in Benidorm, the lump was only getting bigger. “I remember being in my swimsuit, and I had quite big breasts anyway, but was thinking that one looked bigger than the other,” Annie says. “As the days went on I was getting more and more anxious.
“I came back to England, woke up with a hangover, went to the hospital, and sat down on my own in front of an oncologist.” That’s when Annie was told she had stage 3 breast cancer, and that it’d spread to all but one of her lymph nodes. She was given just a 30 per cent chance of survival.
“I just said, ‘Okay, what do I need to do to get rid of it?’ And he said, ‘I don’t think you realise how serious this is’,” she remembers. “He was telling me I was facing my own mortality… I wanted to know what the plan was.”
Starting treatment
The plan was to undergo a single mastectomy on her right breast, five months of chemotherapy, six weeks of radiotherapy, 18 months of a further treatment, and IVF to preserve her eggs. “I said I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t want kids,” she explains. And I knew it was really bad, but I was just so worried about losing my hair. Obviously, my first thought was, ‘I really don’t want to die’. I felt really guilty about the lifestyle I’d been living.”
Another major concern for Annie, was how her diagnosis was going to affect her chances of meeting a guy. “I’d spent so much time behaving irresponsibly, and it had all been around how I looked, and what I needed to do to meet someone,” she says. “But there I was being told that my hair and extensions were going, I’d have one breast, I’d look hideous, I’d balloon because of the chemo, and I’d be a nervous wreck.”
Booked in as an emergency patient, she had a mastectomy two weeks later. “I was actually looking forward to having it because I thought when I woke up, the cancer would be gone,” she says. “When I did wake up, my surgeon was there saying they’d managed to get it all out. I was so delighted.”
This was the first time she made her survival a priority over how she looked. “I was thinking it actually doesn’t matter. My body looked awful, but I was going to be okay. I knew then I needed to start being responsible and mature.”
Starting chemo shortly afterwards, Annie found this part of the journey super tough. “I worked through my chemo at my job in recruitment, because it minimised my anxiety about dying. Talking to people all day distracted me. But I remember sitting in the office interviewing someone, twirling my hair around in my hand, and a big clump fell out. I thought, ‘Oh shit,’ and hid it under the desk.”
That night, accompanied by her friend Theresa and a bottle of whisky, she shaved the remainder of her hair off. “We went out that evening, and I got all dressed up and flirted with men. It was lovely and really helped. I didn’t mourn my hair, I just embraced my new look.”
A new attitude to dating
Annie started chemo in September of that year, and four months later was talking to a number of guys on dating sites. “They all wanted pictures, which was definitely not something I could provide at that stage,” she says. “Plus, in my head, my way of dating had changed. I wanted a man I could have a future with, not mess around with and go on a few dates only for nothing to happen. That was fine for my lifestyle before, but not now.”
That’s when she began talking to Sam, a soldier, who she thought was “exciting and really sexy”. They agreed to meet in January, but Annie hadn’t told him she was battling cancer. “All the pictures I uploaded were not accurate,” she says. “They weren’t me without a breast, or hair. They were from before I had cancer… So I was worried about that.”
Unbeknown to Sam, Annie scheduled their first date for the last day of her chemo. “It was snowing, and I was wearing a big Katie Price inspired wig, three pairs of eyelashes, and a bottle of fake tan,” she says. “I cannot imagine the sight of me.”
Whereas all her past dates had centred around alcohol and partying, this time they simply went for a walk in the park. When Sam suggested a drink, Annie explained she wasn’t feeling well. “He asked why, and I said, ‘Oh, I’m going through breast cancer at the moment’. He was cool, that’s the only way to describe it. He just said, ‘Oh okay, how do you feel about it?’” she remembers. “He didn’t ask what I’d had chopped off, what was going on, whether I’d live or die, just how I felt. And that was truly romantic.
“I just thought, right, I need to marry you. Genuinely, I’d never felt like that before. And then I went home. As I was going up the escalator, I felt like there was a gospel choir singing.”
Learning to love herself again
Within weeks they were in a serious relationship and meeting each other’s parents. “Sam was fine about my physical appearance and my body,” Annie says. “He made me feel beautiful.”
When in June 2010 they went on their first holiday together, it was Sam who encouraged her to ditch her prosthetic breast and swim in the sea. “He kept saying, ‘Go in the sea, I’ll come with you, I’ll hold your hand,’ and I did it,” she remembers.
“It was so amazing. I felt the sea water against my chest, and it was like this huge epiphany. I stopped giving a shit. I was in the sea with this man who loved me, thought I was beautiful, and didn’t care I had one boob… it was so romantic.” Up until that point, Annie hadn’t felt totally confident being naked. “Although he made me feel great about myself, I’d never taken my bra off in front of him,” she says.
In January 2011, they moved in together and shortly afterwards, Annie underwent reconstructive surgery. “I wanted to get engaged and was thinking long-term. I wanted to have breasts because when I walked down the aisle, I wanted to have cleavage,” she says.
Every day while she was there, Sam travelled to and from the hospital after work, which was a four-hour round trip. “I was in the special care unit, and I’d had the fat taken out of my stomach and put in my breast. It was a debilitating operation. After visiting me each night, Sam would call the hospital and the nurse would come in and say, ‘That was your boyfriend, he wants you to know that he loves you.’”
Making it official
That summer, the pair went on holiday to Gran Canaria where Sam asked Annie, then 27, to marry him. “We rang both of our families at 3am because we were so excited,” she says. “We started planning our wedding immediately.”
And, in October 2012, Sam wore his Army uniform as he watched Annie walk down the aisle towards him. “I felt really accomplished, mature and proud of myself,” she says. “I was totally and utterly in unconditional love. I also looked at myself and I just thought I looked lovely. Everyone was very emotional, because they knew what we’d been through. It was very special.”
In 2014, Annie got the official all clear and the couple started trying for a baby. “I was on a sex mission to get pregnant,” she says. “I had a timetable, it was not sexy. They’d put me on the waiting list for IVF treatment, but six weeks later I was pregnant naturally.”
Now parents to Joseph, four, and Rose, one, Annie has written a book about her experiences. “I wanted to write it to encourage young women that you can live well when going through trauma,” she says. “My book is a cancer memoir, but not a sob story – it’s empowering and uplifting. I wanted to provide a source of hope, and encouragement to women, to show them that if we learn to love ourselves, then we stand a better chance of being loved.”
Annie’s book, Love and Remission is out June 20 and available to buy on Amazon.
Follow Annie on Twitter, Instagram, and visit her website here.
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