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Dawn Diamonds

I have two things in common with Kylie Minogue. We were both singers & both diagnosed with breast cancer in the same week. There the similarity ends, Kylie is a Icon & seemed to recover her health fairly quickly whereas I had performed my little shows around the West Midlands & for me my career was over.

Following surgery I was given chemotherapy & became very ill. Eventually, after several agonising months, I was diagnosed with pulmonary embolism due to the Hickman Line. Breathing was very difficult, I was in a wheelchair. The chemotherapy treatment was abandoned.

I began to slowly recover & agreed to try Zoladex to help prevent the cancer returning. During the 7 months I was on this drug I struggled to walk more than a few metres without having to sit down, I couldn’t breath.

Following diagnoses my husband Paul & I decided to move to the country, we chose a bungalow in the beautiful Waveney Valley. Whatever time I had left I was determined to enjoy.

But I began to improve, to go on longer & longer walks To start swimming again, one length, then two, now forty. I started to breath better. We went out to listen to some live music. I started to sing along, we went again, then I got up & sang a number. The voice was coming back. I began to do vocal exercises. Last year I decided to have reconstruction and felt better about my body,

It is now nearly five years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. You are never confident of the future but you can try to enjoy each day. My voice is now back, powerful & a bigger range than before. I have a band & we perform the music I love, traditional Irish & English songs, great melodies with a story. Songs that deserve to be well sung. We have just released our first album ‘ and so it begins’.

Order a copy on our CD page.

Dawn Diamonds 26/2/2010