Newbury teacher braving charity walk after breast cancer diagnosis

A Newbury based teacher is taking on Breast Cancer Now’s Pink Ribbon Walk after being diagnosed with breast cancer just over a year ago.

A week before Christmas in 2023, Katy Headland found a lump in her breast.

She was then diagnosed with stage two HER2 negative breast cancer in the New Year.

Now, after surgery and radiotherapy treatment, the 39-year-old, who teaches at Matthew Arnold School in Oxford, is joining the charity walk at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire on May 10.

Mrs Headland, who also lost both her parents to cancer, said: “My diagnosis was a huge shock.

“It wasn’t something I was expecting, and going through treatment definitely brought up a lot of grief about losing my parents to cancer too.

“I’d lost them both by the time I was 30, so they didn’t meet their grandchildren.”

She said she felt lost for six months after she had surgery, but that walking helped her through her recovery.

She added: “Very slowly, because everything hurt, I started walking around my area and then when I started driving, I’d go up to the woods near my home and I would just walk through the woods, which really helped.

“And then at the end of May, when I was over the worst of the fatigue that resulted from my treatment, me and my husband, my two children, my sister and her girlfriend climbed Pen Y Fan in South Wales.

“It took a while and was a real challenge, but it really felt like a pivotal moment in which I felt like myself again.”

Pink Ribbon Walks are 10 or 20 miles.

Visit https://breastcancernow.org/prw to register or find out more about the event.

And speak to one of the charity’s expert nurses by calling 0808 800 6000 if you have questions about breast health.