JULIA Bradbury compared the days before her life-saving mastectomy to dystopian film The Hunger Games.
The 51-year-old broadcaster bravely documented her breast cancer battle in tonight’s Breast Cancer and Me documentary on ITV.
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Sharing her emotions and feelings as she counted down to her operation, Julia said: “It’s ten days to go now until my op and it feels like I’m part of some really bad game show, like The Hunger Games or something.
“Even thought his op is hopefully going to get rid of his cancer and fingers crossed it hasn’t spread anywhere else and it’s going to save me hopefully.
“I find my hand moving to my boob, just holding it, knowing that it’s not going to feel the same, be the same again.
“I feel really scared, shocked and frightened.”
Emotional fans praised her for sharing her most private and emotional moments including when she bared her chest after being marked up for surgery.
Mum-of-three Julia found a lump in 2020, which was proved to be a cluster of benign micro-cysts.
She booked an appointment for a mammogram last year to check on the lump, but almost didn’t go after there had been no cause for alarm.
Her sister insisted she keep the appointment, during which the consultant pointed out a tiny shadow in her breast.
Biopsies were taken and she faced an anxious wait over the September weekend for the results.
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Her doctor then broke the news she had a “high grade” six cm tumour.
She revealed how hard it was to tell her kids about it, telling the Daily Mail one asked “can I still hug you?”
Julia appeared on ITV daytime This Morning today ahead of the airing of her documentary Breast Cancer and Me.
In a clip from the programme, she said: “One of the things I did before the operation was to say goodbye to my left boob.
“I just said ‘thank you for everything we’ve been through together. I’ve breastfed both of my children, I’ve jumped in the sea. I’ve run up mountains.”
The misty-eyed TV star then told an emotional Holly and Phil in the studio: “That got me.
“I mean my kids have been amazing, they’ve made friends with my new boob, they say ‘mummy it doesn’t feel the same’ and I say ‘I know it doesn’t feel the same but I’m here, and that’s what it has done.'”
The TV star underwent a mastectomy a month afterward the diagnosis to try and stop the cancer spreading.
Six months later she told You magazine she has “micro-invasions”, which are tiny fragments of cancer cells which have come from her milk duct and into breast tissue.
Genetic testing also revealed she has a higher than average risk of her cancer returning, but she said she is learning to live with that.
She wrote on Instagram last week: “I had no idea what life after a #mastectomy would be like.
“I feel incredibly grateful that some things have gone my way during my breast cancer diagnosis. Each of our stories is different.
“I was fortunate to be able to have immediate reconstruction after my breast was removed containing a 6cm tumour.
“Nothing prepares you for the shock & impact…& yet but here I am in a bikini again. Didn’t think this would happen.”
