When Susan Leeming found out she had breast cancer, she wasn’t expecting to hear it was because she had never had children.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she told The Mirror.
“To find my decision not to be a parent could have caused my cancer was unthinkable.”
Susan found a lump in her right breast and after getting it check out, she was diagnosed with grade 3 breast cancer.
She had a successful mastectomy and needed chemotherapy, but a biopsy showed the cancer cells had developed because she’d never been a mum.
Women who have babies have lower oestrogen levels while hers were abnormally high – high enough to trigger disease.
Her oncologist told her that her decision not to have children meant her ovaries had never taken a “rest” from producing oestrogen, sending her levels rocketing to more than five times the average level of 35.
“I crumbled. I’ve never heard avoiding motherhood could cause cancer,” she told the publication.
“I was horrified it was somehow my fault for not having kids…But I would never have brought children into the world just to protect me from illness.”
However, good news finally came her way as she’s now in remission and runs her own hairdressing salon selling chemical-free products.
“At the end of the day, overcoming cancer made me the positive person I am today.”
“I’m just lucky that my choice not to have kids didn’t end up ending me.”
Watch: Woman with terminal breast cancer pens a diary for her young daughter
