Former Hollyoaks actor Ali Bastian has opened up about the moments before her single mastectomy, where she thanked her breast before saying goodbye.
The soap actor, 43, who has also starred in Doctors and The Bill, announced last year that she was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer after finding a lump while breastfeeding her daughter Isabella.
In March, Bastian, best known for playing Becca Dean in Hollyoaks, posted an update on her Instagram telling fans that she was in her “final week of radiotherapy, which should mark the end my active treatment”.
She added: “I had my mastectomy in January which was thankfully a success and has healed really well, it proved that my chemo(therapy) had worked. As I sit here right now, I’m free from cancer. I can’t even believe it.”
Now, in an interview with The Times, Bastian has shared what it was like in the moments before she had surgery and the “bonkers” conversation she had with the breast that was removed.
“On the operating table before my surgery, I was stroking my breast, thanking it for feeding my babies, for all the fun we’ve had and for putting up such a great fight the last year,” she explained. “The nurses probably thought I was bonkers but I needed that moment of goodbye. When I came round, I was very emotional – there was a huge sense of release and relief.”
Bastian also revealed that she is now considering reconstructive surgery but is currently happy with her prosthetic: “It’s neon pink, which makes me happy, and once I knew I could look like myself with my clothes on, I thought, ‘OK, I can manage this.’”
After announcing that she was cancer free, Bastian, who lives in West Cork, Ireland, with her husband David O’Mahony, thanked the nurses at Cork University Hospital, who gave her “compassion, time and space to share and talk about my experience of a very challenging treatment pathway”, which she called “an awful lot to process mentally and emotionally”.
“To be coming out of the other side of this feels unreal, after the shock of a diagnosis it’s hard to let in the light and believe that it might just be OK,” she added.
“The road back to my life won’t be a linear one… and I will share with you as always, as much of my truth of this experience as I can. I am so, so grateful for all of your support.”
The 2009 Strictly Come Dancing semi-finalist shares another daughter, Isla Rose, with actor, writer and director husband O’Mahony, who she married in 2019.
According to Cancer Research UK, stage 2 breast cancer is an early form of the condition, and can mean the disease is either in the breast or in the nearby lymph nodes, or both.
