LOVE Island star Sharon Gaffka has bravely opened up on her “very painful” cancer scare which struck at the same time her mum was receiving treatment for the disease.
The matchmaking show alumni, 26, has switched her focus to health campaigning following her reality TV stint, firstly honing in on the issue of drink-spiking.
Now The Celeb Report can reveal how the former civil servant has turned her attention to quashing the “stigma” around females feeling able to check their breasts for cancer signs.
The mission is particularly poignant for Sharon – who not only has a family history of cancer but herself suffered her own worry when she was a teen.
Speaking exclusively to The Celeb Report Online, Sharon said: “My mum [Linda] had cancer, and you know, I had my own breast cancer scare when I was 19.
“So, for me it was really important to raise awareness because if I didn’t know what to look for, and I didn’t know what was abnormal or normal for me, then had it been something more sinister than it ended up being, I could have been in a lot of trouble because I couldn’t spot the signs early.”
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Sharon continued: “I think people have said that with breast cancer, your partner tends to find it before you do, just because they’re paying more attention.
“I find that young women or anybody, there’s a stigma about checking your chest or some who find it weird. So I want to take that stigma away.”
Talking about how she found her own lump, she said she discovered it by checking herself.
She added: “I remember feeling discomfort in my right breast between my breast and my underarm. I didn’t know that that was a potential spot.
“People automatically assume that breast cancer is literally in breast tissue, as opposed to like maybe in your collarbones, or in your underarms.
“I basically had a solid lump of tissue, and it was really painful, even just to move around in general life.
“Yeah you know, I think I found it pretty much the same time that my mum was finishing her treatment.
“So knowing how quickly my mum caught on that she wasn’t well, kind of pushed me to go check myself, so I went to a GP pretty quickly.
“I was very lucky to find that it was just it was basically like scar tissue, I’ve injured myself and my body was trying to fix it.
“If I didn’t know that, that was a part of my body that could potentially have breast cancer.”
Sharon previously revealed her dad is a red head, and Polish by origin, and her mum is Indonesian born.
Talking of her family’s health history, she told us: “I think it’s quite common knowledge that quite a few members of my family have had cancer or died from cancer in my lifetime, including both my grandparents.
“I think three out of four of my grandparents had cancer.”
Meanwhile, before she ever appeared on Love Island, Sharon opened up about the difficulties of being a woman of a mixed ethnic background in a Twitter post.
She wrote: “As a mixed-race woman, it’s a constant battle to get people to hear and understand your lived experiences as a woman and as a BAME individual.”
The acronym BAME refers to “Black, Asian and minority ethnic.”
Sharon added: “Do you know how degrading it is when the battle happens within the walls of your own home?”
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“I am not who I am because I’m there to tick diversity boxes. I am a person, with feelings, with knowledge and with experience.”
“If the pill is hard to swallow it’s because the truth hurts.”
