Bra fitting helps cancer patients 'feel fantastic'
BBC/Kay DavidsonA cancer charity which hosts free bra fitting workshops for women who have had a mastectomy says it is helping give them their confidence back.
Every year in the UK, about 60,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer, with about a quarter of them undergoing a mastectomy or lumpectomy to fully or partially remove their breast tissue.
Charity Fighting All Cancers Together (Fact), based in Wrekenton in Gateshead, offers free monthly sessions for women to try different types of specialist bra and prosthetic breasts before ordering them.
Barbara Stubbings, who was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years ago, said she could now wear the same clothes as "everyone else".
Sessions leader Jo Silcock said: "They leave this room feeling better than they did when they came in."
She said after having surgery, for a lot of women, "that's all they see".
"They're not seeing their shape or image, they're just seeing what's happened and perhaps what she's lost.
"What we try to do is make a woman feel fantastic in her bra again, make her feel like she's always felt and make it one less thing to worry about."
BBC/Kay DavidsonHowever, she said the workshops also gave women a space where they could feel comfortable and understood.
"You've got ladies that are going through very similar situations, but it's also not a clinical or a retail environment, and you're with working with someone who has knowledge about what you've been through.
"It's lovely to watch someone come in who's perhaps very shy, then watch them skipping out the room."
Stubbings, who is expecting to finish her latest round of treatment in November, said she initially did not know how to even get a specialist bra.
"Jo fitted us and gave me an insert, it helps a great deal because I can now wear the same clothes as everyone else and I can look normal - I think she's great," she said.
