Tasha Carmen found a lump while she was 30 weeks pregnant
A mum-of-two who said her breasts “tried to kill (her)” after she was diagnosed with breast cancer just four weeks post-partum is calling for more research into treatment options. Stay-at-home mum Tasha Carmen, 35, from Bristol, said she discovered a lump in her right breast while in the shower at 30 weeks pregnant with her second child – but she delayed seeking help out of fears she would be forced to deliver early or terminate the pregnancy.
After giving birth to Elvis, now two, via a planned C-section in April 2023, Tasha’s husband Stefan, 35, an electrician, mentioned the lump to their midwife, who immediately referred her to a breast clinic for further testing. She said she waited two weeks for the appointment and, two weeks after that, Tasha was told she had stage three triple negative breast cancer.
She started chemotherapy and immunotherapy straight away, before having a single mastectomy on her right breast – although this did not affect breastfeeding, as she bottlefed her son. Tasha later opted to have her healthy left breast removed in March this year, after feeling like her breasts “tried to kill (her)”. She now feels like she is “the person that (she) was meant to be”.
“I’m so happy that I pushed to get it done, and I’m so happy that I am living flat – not many people do that,” Tasha told PA Real Life. “I’m happy in my body. I’m probably a lot happier now than I was with breasts – this is the person that I was meant to be.”
Tasha was 30 weeks pregnant when she first discovered a lump in her right breast. She said she “knew deep down” that something was wrong but pushed it to the back of her mind. She showed Stefan the lump, but opted not to tell her mum, Sharon, 55, who is a nurse.
“My thought was, if I tell someone professional and they say, ‘Oh yeah, there’s something wrong’, they were either going to make me deliver the baby early or terminate the pregnancy,” Tasha explained. “I was panicking, and thought let’s not get this looked at until after.”
After giving birth via a planned caesarean in April 2023, Stefan told their midwife about the lump and Tasha was referred to a breast clinic. She attended the appointment alone, while Stefan looked after the children, and had an ultrasound and a biopsy.
“I didn’t really think that they did biopsies unless there was something going on, so that did make me panic,” said Tasha. For her follow-up appointment two weeks later, she took her mum with her – and this is when Tasha received her diagnosis.
“There was a surgeon there and a nurse, and I was like, ‘I know this is going to be bad’,” she said. “They sat me down and obviously told me that I had cancer.
“I just didn’t know what to think, my mind just shut off. It felt like I was in a movie. I was crying, my mum was crying.”
Tasha was diagnosed with stage three triple negative breast cancer, a rare and aggressive form of the disease that lacks the hormone receptors – oestrogen and progesterone – and the HER2 protein that other breast cancers often have. This means it does not respond to hormone therapies, leaving fewer treatment options compared to hormone receptor-positive cancers.
She said she began a six-month course of chemotherapy immediately, taking newborn Elvis to the first few sessions.
“It was really cute, actually. All the nurses were like, ‘Do you even have a baby in there?’, because he was really quiet and he was so good,” said Tasha.
But despite his comforting presence, she was frightened. “I remember the first time they were hooking me up to the chemo drugs, they were saying what could happen and it just scared me so much. I just started crying,” she said.
Despite this, Tasha said she was “quite lucky” with side effects, mostly experiencing fatigue and occasional nausea. Explaining the diagnosis to her older son Rogan, now six, however, was especially hard.
Her cancer nurse gave her a copy of Mummy’s Got A Poorly, a book for young children that helped explain the changes her body would go through. She said she lost her hair two weeks into treatment after deciding against cold-capping, because it would extend her chemotherapy appointments, and decided to shave it all off.
“I actually felt so powerful – it made me feel like I was standing up to the cancer. I was facing it head-on,” she said. Tasha had a single mastectomy on her right side and lymph node clearance in December 2023.
This was followed by further immunotherapy treatment, which she said she stopped early in September 2024 because of side effects including fatigue, joint pain, dizziness and a loss of appetite. Tasha said doctors found she had low cortisol levels as well, which has left her “steroid-dependent”. Rather than have a breast reconstruction, Tasha decided to “live flat” – and opted to have her left breast removed too in March 2025.
She said: “Stefan was really supportive – it’s not made any difference to us. We are still the same people and he still loves me the same.”
To connect with others with cancer, Tasha started an Instagram account and she realised she “wasn’t the only person going through this”. Now, she has check-ups every three months due to the side effects from immunotherapy and, after deciding to stop working as a dental nurse, she is “focusing on family”.
“My family and my husband are just everything,” she said. “I do a lot of things that I probably would have said no to before. I’ve got new tattoos and piercings, I dress how I want.”
Tasha is sharing her story now in support of the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, which is celebrating 25 years of life-changing discoveries.
She said: “We desperately need new treatment options for triple negative cancer – some people have chemo-resistant breast cancer, and it’s difficult to have a better prognosis if there’s not more research.”
Speaking about her message to others, she added: “Just check your chest. You just need to know what your normal is and, if it’s not normal, don’t be silly, get it checked.”
For more information, visit breastcancernow.org/research