Welcome to the Breast Cancer Now podcast, providing support and information to anyone affected by breast cancer. This podcast contains the personal stories, opinions and experiences of its speakers, rather than those of Breast Cancer Now. Welcome to the Breast Cancer Now podcast. I'm your host, Laura Price. I'm a food writer, an author, and I live with secondary breast cancer. I'm proud to bring you this podcast which aims to support anyone affected by breast cancer, whether that's you or a loved one. If you're new here or recently diagnosed with breast cancer, feel free to take a look through our past episodes on Spotify, Apple podcasts, the Breast Cancer Now website, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You'll find conversations about everything from fertility to menopause to chemotherapy, and simply helping you to understand the many new and sometimes scary words and information that come into your life when you or a loved one are diagnosed with breast cancer. If you like to watch your podcasts, you can search for Breast Cancer Now on YouTube, then click on the podcast tab to watch my conversations with our guests. We'll also hear from Breast Cancer Now's nurses, who'll be on hand to provide tips and support and to answer some of your questions. We'll be covering topics like mental health and grief, secondary breast cancer, genetics, cancer in ethnic communities, and even breast cancer in men.

You'll also be hearing from me, Laura Price, both as your presenter and as a patient with 13 years of lived experience with breast cancer. I've been through everything from a primary diagnosis and being cured for many years and dealing with the emotional impact of survivorship to then having a secondary diagnosis and learning to live with incurable cancer. I've been through grief, infertility, finding out I was born with a gene mutation that caused my cancer and I've even written a book inspired by my experiences.

Just a little on my background. I was diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time in 2012 when I was 29 years old. I found a lump in my breast while on holiday and was diagnosed a few months later after initially being told that because of my age it was unlikely to be breast cancer. I had surgery followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy and by the end of 2012 I was effectively cancer free. For almost 10 years I took the oestrogen suppressing drug tamoxifen. But in 2022, almost exactly a decade to the day I was first diagnosed, I found out the cancer had spread to my bones and was now incurable. For the last two and a half years, I've been living with secondary breast cancer. That's when the disease spreads from the breast to a different part of the body. For example, the liver, the brain, the lungs, or in my case, the bones. It means the cancer cannot be cured, but in many cases, there are lots of options for treatment, not only to extend your life. but also to allow you to live well.

If you've been diagnosed with secondary breast cancer or would like to understand it better, there are lots of resources on this podcast, including a conversation with Claire from the charity Make 2nds Count, and a chat with secondary breast cancer patient Fran on exercise and cancer. I'll also be talking about my experience throughout this podcast, and we'll have a couple of episodes dedicated to secondary breast cancer too. I wanted to give an update on my treatment for anyone who's been following this podcast for a while, or even just to give you a little bit of hope. I was given a course of treatment in 2022 and I'm fortunate to still be on the same drugs now in 2025, a combination of tablets and injections with regular blood tests and full body scans every three months. I was also very fortunate to be able to have surgery to remove the cancer from my bones and at the time of recording this podcast I'm doing really well.

When I'm not interviewing guests for the Breast Cancer Now podcast, I'm usually writing. My debut novel, Single Bald Female, was inspired by my own breast cancer diagnosis and my experience of dating with a bald head. It tells the story of 30 something Jess and the effect of her breast cancer diagnosis on the relationship she has with her girlfriends, many of whom are settling down and getting married. We also go with her as she makes a very special new friendship with someone she meets in the hospital. It's a fictional story about a made-up character, but of course, as you can probably guess, it does have lots of inspiration from my life and experience too. In my day job, I write about restaurants and food, and I also host a podcast called Life in Food with Laura Price, where I talk to inspiring guests about their lives through a culinary lens. Each episode, I cover a different topic like food and fertility, food and friendship, and even food and grief. It's not a cancer podcast. but lots of my guests have been through all kinds of different personal challenges and my very first episode was Food and Cancer with the incredible Coppafeel founder, Kris Hallenga, who sadly died last year. I share occasional updates about my life with secondary breast cancer on my Instagram, @laurapricewrites, and you can find that link in the show notes.

But that's enough about me. I want to hear about you. This season, we're inviting your questions for the Breast Cancer Now nurses. Perhaps you've been diagnosed with breast cancer and you'd like tips on what to eat or how often to exercise. Maybe you have breast cancer in your family and you're wondering how to get screening or genetic testing. If you have a question for Breast Cancer Now's nurses, you can send it to podcast@breastcancernow.org. We'd particularly love you to send us a voice recording with your question. If you have a smartphone, just search for the recording app, hit record, tell us your first name only, and record a message of up to one minute. Then just send the recording file to podcast@breastcancernow.org. We'll play those messages on a future podcast for our nurses to answer your questions. But don't worry if you can't record your voice. You can also email us at podcast@breastcancernow.org and I'll read out your question for our nurses to answer.

Breast Cancer Now's vision is that by 2050, everyone diagnosed with breast cancer will not only live but be supported to live well. At the end of each episode we'll be asking our guests what it means to them to live well. To you, living well might mean spending time with your friends and family, or perhaps it's pursuing your dream career. To me, living well means living with minimal stress, which means cutting out certain things from my life and saying no more often. It means eating well. eating healthily, yes, but also never denying myself a piece of cake or a packet of crisps. It also means finding time to do the work I want to do, like presenting this podcast and working on my second novel. But without any of that, living well would simply be spending as much time as possible on the sofa with my husband and my cats and usually eating something really comforting like a jacket potato with beans and cheese.

It's an absolute honour and a privilege to host this podcast and to be able to interview not only my fellow patients, but also the scientists developing the treatments that are keeping me alive and may keep you or your loved ones alive in future. There is so much hope. And the reason this podcast exists is to help you feel less alone as you deal with breast cancer and also to explain and simplify some of the terms that you might not feel comfortable or might just not have time to ask in a healthcare setting like sex and relationships or the menopause. We're here as you go through what might just be one of the biggest challenges of your life.

We'll be publishing a new episode every other Friday and if you subscribe to the Breast Cancer Now podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, you'll be alerted as soon as a new episode is available. You can also find every episode on the Breast Cancer Now website. Don't forget, if you're more of a visual person, you can also subscribe on YouTube. Just search for Breast Cancer Now or follow the links in our show notes. Do also follow Breast Cancer Now on social media. Thank you for listening to the Breast Cancer Now podcast and stay tuned for season 6.