Julia Bradbury has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Julia Bradbury
The 'Countryfile' presenter admitted her brain "started to explode" when she was given the devastating diagnosis and she's now preparing to undergo a mastectomy to remove her left breast next month, while surgeons will also remove tissue from her lymph nodes to establish whether the cancer has spread.
She told the Mail on Sunday newspaper: "It changes your world forever in an instant.
"There is no preparing you for those words. You hear 'cancer' and your brain starts to explode."
The 51-year-old presenter - who has children Zeph, 10, and twins Zena and Xanthe, six, with husband Gerard Cunningham - found a lump in her breast last year which proved to be a benign cluster of cysts, but she had to have another mammogram this year and though that didn't return anything unusual, doctors found a shadow at her follow-up appointment.
She recalled: "Suddenly I was lying down on my side with my back braced against a pillow having a machine like a hole punch taking lumps out of my breast."
Although Julia has been told her "sizeable tumour" could be "trouble to treat" because of where it is positioned, she is hopeful that it's been caught early enough to treat.
She said: "I have to hope I have caught mine early enough.
"A mastectomy is a shattering thing to go through but it means that I am going to live and be here for my children."
But the presenter is trying not to look too far into the future and is simply focused on the next step of her treatment.
She said: "Cancer has so many points, the diagnosis seems like everything, but it isn't. It puts you on a pathway and you have to navigate that while holding back your emotions so you are not overwhelmed all the time.
"Right now I'm simply focused on having surgery because I don't know how I am going to be, if I will have more cancer to deal with, how I will cope with recovery, how life will feel afterwards."
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