Sarah Harding can’t "look at herself in the mirror any more" after her mastectomy.
Sarah Harding
The Girls Aloud hitmaker had to have her breast removed as she continues to fight her breast cancer, which she was diagnosed with in summer, and she has admitted the devastating fight - which has since spread to other parts of her body - has left her unable to recognise herself.
She said: "Now there’s just a bunch of stitches where my breast used to be. As much as I know it had to happen and I want to be brave, I can’t look at myself in the mirror any more. I can’t face it. On top of everything else, I just don’t look like me any more. I don’t recognise myself. It’s very hard to wake up every morning knowing that a part of me is missing; that part of my womanhood is gone. The loss of it breaks my heart. Some women can have reconstruction, but I know I’d just end up back in intensive care because I’m too ill. I suppose it had crossed my mind at one point, the idea of reconstruction, but now I have to be realistic. I have to let go."
And the 39-year-old singer admits she "screamed the place down" when she woke up after the surgery and felt lucky her mother was there to be with her.
Writing in her memoir, Hear Me Out, as shared with The Times magazine, she explained: "The mastectomy was something I’d hoped wouldn’t have to happen, but looking back, I suppose it was inevitable. I remember the surgeons saying they would make a drawing of what parts of my breast needed to be taken away, and it was virtually all of it.
"They also took a skin graft from my back, somehow managing to work around my tattoos. Coming round from that operation was one of the worst moments of my life. I’m so grateful that Mum was there waiting for me because when I woke up I screamed the place down."
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