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Mum and daughter diagnosed with breast cancer on the same day.



When Karen Williams found a lump in her breast, she and her husband went to break the bad news to her mother.

They were astounded when Diane Leach told them that she had found a lump in a breast, too.

Their worst fears were confirmed when both were subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer on the same day, having unwittingly been in the same queue for a mammogram.

The coincidences didn’t end there, however. For mother and daughter were then operated on by the same surgeon in the same hospital on the same day.

Mrs Williams, 41, and Mrs Leach, 65, are now well on the way to recovery from their cancers.

The chain of coincidence began after Mrs Williams, a mother of four from Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, discovered a pea-sized lump in her breast while showering.

‘I didn’t like the feel of it. Straight away I thought it was cancer,’ she said.

She and her husband Stuart Burnside went to tell her mother at her home in Chester.

‘I told her I’d found a lump, and she said, “So have I”. I thought she was joking,’ said Mrs Williams, who works as a beauty consultant at Boots.

‘I went to my GP and she went to hers. The doctor thought it might just be a cyst, but I knew.


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‘I went for a mammogram a few days later and didn’t realise my mum was also going. Stuart saw her as we were in the queue.


‘It was a crazy situation to both be diagnosed on the same day and my two sisters and my dad didn’t know what to do with themselves – they didn’t know who to visit.’

Both women went for surgery at the Countess of Chester Hospital on the same day last year.


The mother and daughter also underwent surgery on the same day, at the same hospital

Mrs Leach, who has retired from a carpet fitting business, underwent a mastectomy while her daughter had a tumour removed from her right breast, tissue from her left and had both breasts reduced.

They were even in adjoining wards after their surgery and could bang on the wall to each other.

‘On the day of our operation, the consultant at the hospital couldn’t believe that we had been diagnosed on the same day and would be undergoing our operation on the same day,’ Mrs Williams said. ‘She said that in 40 years in the NHS she had never seen anything like it before.’

Even more astonishing is the fact that there were no genetic factors linking their diagnoses.

‘The breast cancer we had is not hereditary and can happen to any woman, at any time. It is just a case of bad luck that we were both diagnosed at the same time,’ Mrs Williams said.

‘It was a really hard period to go through but we have a wonderful family who supported us all the way through it, and continue to be there for us.’



Mother and daughter were both treated at the Countess of Chester Hospital

After receiving support from Macmillan staff during their treatment, she was full of praise for their work and the support they offer to patients.

‘The chemotherapy was really, really severe and there were some really dark days when I thought I just couldn’t carry on going,’ Mrs Williams said.

‘Having a wonderful family and husband around me, as well as the support given by Macmillan, helped me keep going and now, thankfully, I am starting to get back to some sort of normality.


'I have gone back to work recently at Boots, which I have loved and everyone has been great, but I think that I might like to try a different career path and work with those affected by cancer.

‘It has really had a profound effect on both me and my mum.’

Having finished their courses of chemotherapy, the mother and daughter are now hosting a charity event in aid of Macmillan Cancer Care.

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