‘Doctors said I was too young for breast cancer’

A woman whose breast cancer symptoms were dismissed because she was “too young” is taking to the catwalk to help raise awareness and support research into the disease.

Sarah Wheldon, from Dorset, was living in Lyon, France, when she she said she was repeatedly turned away by health professionals because she was “only 33”.

Her four-month fight for a diagnosis was followed by a year of treatment and surgery, before she was finally able to return to the UK.

In October – Breast Cancer Awareness Month – she will be one of 14 models taking part in a Charity Angels fashion show in Dorchester to raise funds for research into secondary breast cancer.

Ms Wheldon had been living and working in France for about five years when she sought help for a lump and red patch on her breast but she said her concerns were immediately dismissed and she was sent away with eczema cream.

She said she eventually persuaded another doctor to refer her for a mammogram.

But she said when she arrived for the appointment, “the radiologist just said ‘I’m not doing it’ because I was too young”.

“I left in floods of tears and was feeling very alone.”

Ms Wheldon was eventually diagnosed with cancer on her 34th birthday before undergoing months of chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy.

She said the months she spent trying to get someone to listen to her concerns was by far the most frustrating and traumatic part of her experience.

“That was the time I struggled to talk about,” she said. “I start to feel angry.”

By that time, she had also confided in her parents Julie and John, who came to visit her in Lyon every month and, as soon as her active treatment ended, she moved to Dorchester to be with them.

“That was the time for really processing everything that happened,” she said.

“When I got back to the UK, that was the lowest point of my whole life, even though that was what I’d been aiming for and I’d been looking forward to coming home.”

Now 35, Ms Wheldon is on preventative drugs and hormone therapy and says their side effects have become more manageable with time.

She has “got really obsessed” with swimming and has also joined the Purbeck Workshop – a cancer support group offering craft activities.

It was through the workshops that Ms Wheldon heard about the Charity Angels fashion show, which is raising money for Against Breast Cancer – a charity supporting research into secondary breast cancer.

The show takes place at Dorchester’s Corn Exchange on 16 October and brings together 14 women, all with lived experience of breast cancer, who will be modelling for six independent boutiques.

Reflecting on her ordeal, Ms Wheldon said she could not have got through it without her “best friends” – her parents – and she urged others to reach out to their “nearest and dearest”.

She said: “I didn’t want them to worry because I was far away, then I realised I needed to.

“Don’t do it on your own, don’t give up and don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Charity Angels UK Dorchester fashion show takes place at Dorchester Arts Corn Exchange on 16 October.

Money raised will help fund Against Breast Cancer’s junior research fellowship, led by Dr Simon Lord, director of Early Phase Clinical Trials in the Department of Oncology at University of Oxford.