Michaela Strachan double mastectomy
Michaela Strachan recently revealed that she’d had a double mastectomy. Emily Horton talks to the Epsom-born presenter about her cancer diagnosis and the aftermath of the operation
Michaela Strachan double mastectomy
Anyone born in the Eighties instantly recognises Michaela Strachan. She was the bouncy blonde sidekick to Timmy Mallett on the kids’ Saturday morning show Wide Awake Club. Her happy-go-lucky persona and glossy TV looks made her the object of many a young boy’s affections and she even inspired a song by Scouting for Girls ('Michaela Strachan you broke my heart...').
She went on to join another children’s programme, the long-running BBC1 series, The Really Wild Show, in 1993 and it was there that the Epsom-born and Claremont Fan School educated presenter became a household name. She is still a regular fixture on our screens as the host of wildlife docmentaries and, currently, the BBC's Autumnwatch.
So, last month, when it was announced that she’d had a double mastectomy, after being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 48, people were stunned. Taking to social media, many voiced what we were all thinking: how could someone as healthy, happy and fit as Michaela be struck down by the big C?
She admits the diagnosis took her by complete surprise:
“When people talk about cancer they always speak of those who are overweight and unfit, people who drink a lot or smoke a lot. I don't tick any of those boxes,” she tells me on the phone from her mum's home in Hersham, where she is currently staying with her eight year old son Ollie.
“I've always lived a fairly healthy, fit life. I grow my own vegetables and I make an effort to look after myself.”
Savvy enough to know that her celebrity makes her a perfect ambassador for Breakthrough Breast Cancer, Michaela chose to reveal her battle with the illness in Breast Cancer Awareness month in October.
“Don't sit back and think, 'I don't drink or smoke, so I'm alright,’ because you might not be,” she urges. “I don't want to scare people, but I think you have to be realistic. Unfortunately, cancer can be a random thing.”
Fortunately for Michaela, she had an early diagnosis in February, after she had returned home to South Africa, having just finished a strenuous 10 weeks filming the ITV diving show Splash!
Michaela Strachan double mastectomy
Michaela has been based in South Africa for the last 12 years, although she flies back to the UK for work about once a month and makes sure she visits her mum in Surrey at least three or four times a year. Her home is in Cape Town where she lives with her partner Nick, who is a cameraman, their son Ollie and his three children Jade, Tom and Sam.
As Michaela recovered from her participation in Splash! she took the opportunity to have a routine mammogram. She went along to the appointment, thinking it would just be a matter of gown on, scan done and out in time to pick Ollie up from school.
But the scan suggested that all was not well within her right breast and so she was immediately sent for a second
X-ray and then an ultrasound, as a suspicious area of shading kept showing up. A biopsy later revealed a lump the size of a pea which tested positive for stage one lobular multifocal cancer.
She was devastated, wondering how this could have happened – there had been no history of cancer in the family. She admits, naturally, to crying uncontrollably that first night after hearing the news. Nick had lost his first wife to colon cancer, and had brought up the three kids alone and now, she thought, he may face the same cruel fate all over again. But Michaela wasn't going down without a fight.
She consulted her doctor as to her options and, like Angelina Jolie, decided on a double mastectomy to remove not just the diseased breast, but the healthy one as well as a precaution. It was a step that sounds drastic to those of us who haven't been touched by the disease, but it was the obvious option for Michaela.
“I was given the choice to have a double mastectomy because it was the more unusual type of breast cancer, and one that is slightly more likely to appear in the other boob.”
Wasn’t she forced to have surgery as a headline in the Daily Mail suggested?
“I'm a little bit annoyed that they used that word because I wasn't forced at all,” she says. “I was told that surgery was the first and best option. And I talked to friends who have had the procedure and all of them said, ‘Just go for it. You're having one done, you might as well have the other one done too and then it's all over.’”
Was alternative therapy, which is often mooted as an option in the press, something that she considered?
“I am very interested in homeopathy and herbal medicine, and you hear these amazing stories of people who manage to shrink their tumours, but I don't know enough about it to trust my life to it. Maybe it is good to get a few opinions, but once you know you've got cancer and you know you can get it out quickly, you go for it. I think you are on this rollercoaster of 'just deal with it, get it out and let's just make sure it has all gone.’” she says.
“I didn't feel emotional about losing my boobs. I've never been a big boobs girl, I was very average. They've never been a big part of my personality. But I think it must be difficult for women who are terribly proud of their boobs to then have them taken away,” she adds.
Later, when the surgery was over, Michaela began to feel the enormity of her decision.
“It did hit me afterwards, not dramatically, but I think you do have to mourn a loss when part of your body is taken away. But I think you get to the point where you just think, it is what it is… Yes, it is a loss, but let’s move on. Let’s look at the positive side of it. I caught it early, I don’t have to have chemo which would have been a big thing for me, as I would have had to give up work and it would have been a very public thing to have had to go through.”
Amazingly, between her mastectomy and before reconstructive surgery, Michaela was back at work, filming Springwatch in May, but viewers didn’t suspect a thing.
“I don't think anybody noticed because I had these temporary things in,” she explains.
Wisely, Michaela arranged to take time out from work after the reconstruction, which she approached with her characteristic optimism and sense of humour.
“I told my friends that I was having an unwanted boob job!” she laughs, before adding more seriously, “The thought of lying on a beach with my boobs sticking up and people thinking, ‘Yeah, she's had a boob job’ really upsets me; because I'm just the most unlikely person to want perky, sticky-up boobs!”
As for the reconstruction itself, she says, “I found it all very weird going in and looking at silicon implants, and I look at these now, (her voice drifts away from the phone speaker as if she is checking on her breasts) and they feel like a couple of coconuts attached to my chest!”
So, I'm curious to ask, did she choose to have a pair of her ideal, perfect breasts?
“I've stayed the same size. I said I didn't want to be any different to what I was before, thank you very much. Now I’ve had the reconstruction, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling perky! I'm really perky!” she says, her lovely, infectious laugh ringing down the phone.
I ask if she is tempted to do a Charlie Dimmock - Charlie being the gardening presenter who famously went bra-less on television.
She laughs some more, “Well, you certainly don’t need to wear a bra ever again after you’ve had a reconstruction!”
And with that, Michaela has to run. Ollie has been promised a trip to the Harry Potter studios. Dumbledore awaits, and there is no way Michaela is breaking this little boy’s heart.
