Brave cancer survivor Leeanne Curry has had both of her breasts removed in a desperate bid to stay alive for her two young sons.
Miss Curry decided to have a double mastectomy when tests revealed she had a faulty gene that gave her an 89% chance of her cancer returning.
After watching sons, Jake, 10, and Rhys, four, laughing and having fun on a family holiday, she knew she had to rid the burden of cancer hanging over her.
“It was a ticking time-bomb,” she said.
“I realised that my breasts had no purpose any more and I just wanted them off and be done with it.”
Miss Curry, from Drumnadrochit, Inverness-shire, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in June 2012.
She beat the disease after 16 rounds of gruelling chemotherapy over six months and spent two years contemplating her options, before having the six-hour operation on January 5.
Surgeons also removed the 36-year-old’s ovaries to reduce her chances of the disease returning, as the rogue gene is linked to both breast and ovarian cancers.
Miss Curry, who refused reconstruction surgery and implants, said: “I feel amazing and proud that I’ve done all I can to prevent it coming back.
“Just to know I can be there for my family is what it is all about. My boys are everything to me and everything I’ve had done is for them.
“I’d lose my legs for my children. I don’t need a pair of boobs but my children need me.”
Miss Curry only discovered she had the disease after her ex-partner mentioned his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
She said: “I was 34 and had never checked my breasts in my life. But they [doctors] reckon
I had the tumour for about 18 months and if it had been left another six months it would have spread.
“I maintain if he hadn’t told me about his mother I would be dead.”
Nine days later she had the lump removed, followed by 16 rounds of gruelling chemotherapy.
But after six months she was told she had beaten the disease.
She added: “I’m 36, I have had my two children and I never planned to have any more.
“I still have the gene. But now I am no more at risk of getting cancer than anybody else.
“Cancer will always be there, I will never forget about it, but now it’s at the back of my mind and not at the forefront.”