Tuesday 27 February 2001 I've been recalled after a routine breast screening. The letter says: 'Your x-rays show that your breasts need a full examination before we can give you a final result. Please let me reassure you that many women need this extra check-up, and the majority are found to be normal.' The letter is unnerving, but my breasts feel OK to me - two perfectly rounded breasts, 38C.

Wednesday 7 March 2001 Fear - a fear hits me so hard that for a moment my whole body goes rigid. I'm in a small room. There's a mammogram machine. I'm wearing a clinical gown. There's just one radiographer's assistant and me when she makes the unwitting error. She says: 'Hello, Mrs France, how is the lump in your breast?' She'd assumed that I already knew, that I've felt the lump myself. But I haven't. Blind panic grips me. I wail, loudly, and cry out for my daughter, who has come along with me but who is now along the corridor reading a magazine. I shout obscenities at full volume. Dignity disappears. I manoeuvre myself into a corner. Like a frightened cat, I spit.

It's like a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Nursing staff swoop into the room. I can see they think I'm insane and I certainly think they are. I'm a big, healthy, strong woman, a well woman. I haven't had a day off work in years, I hold a professional job, love to travel, there's no genetic history of breast cancer in my family and, boy, can I boogie. Yet now I'm being warned that there's a 'suspicious mass' in my left breast. A little later that afternoon I'm given a biopsy. I lie on the bed defeated. A nurse strokes my arm while a radiographer points out on the screen the shaded area that's causing them concern. Hot, silent tears fall down my cheeks.

Another room - a consultant, a breast cancer care nurse and a nurse who seems to be guarding the door. My daughter sits next to me holding my hand. There's no escape. The consultant is deadly serious. She tells me that I must go back to see them for the results of the biopsy one week later. She outlines what might happen. I might have to have either a lumpectomy or a mastectomy. I stare forlorn under the desk and concentrate hard on her pleated skirt and sensible shoes. How unlike me she is - cowboy boots and flashy lipstick. More than anything else, I just want to go, to go home.

Thursday 15 March 2001 There is no describing how you feel when you are told that you will lose a breast. The language of the experts attempts to ice over the pain. There is a malignant tumour directly behind the nipple of my left breast. I am advised that the breast cancer treatment should be a mastectomy together with a breast reconstruction. One eight-hour operation. I will be in hospital for between a week and 10 days and I will have to take at least three months off work.

The consultant says that during the operation I will also undergo axillary clearance, the removal of lymph glands in my armpit, to discover whether or not the cancer has spread. This will determine whether I must undergo chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. I don't know what lymph glands are or what they do.

I'm warned to stop taking hormone replacement therapy immediately and to start taking tamoxifen, an anti-oestrogen drug, that night. If I need to know anything or if I want to just talk, Carol, the breast cancer nurse, is there for me at all times. She is an angel - she answers my questions, she is to be my counsellor, she wins my faith.

More than this, Carol has a box of tissues and a pamphlet for everything from tamoxifen and its side-effects to home exercises in the months following breast surgery. Unfortunately, there is no pamphlet giving information to middle-aged women who live alone on how to manage financially after breast surgery if they work contract hours; or one on how, with one bandaged artificial breast, to lift a wheelie-bin down the garden to the pavement before the dustbin men arrive; or how to smooth moisturising cream into the scar beneath your shoulder blade without being an acrobat. There is no glossy pamphlet that can provide any comfort in its bullet points.

Comfort, solace or true love comes through those who surround me: my daughter, my mother, my woman friends, my men friends, my colleagues. As news of my misfortune ripples around them, cards, letters and flowers arrive at my front door. My home begins to resemble a chapel of rest.

Thursday 22 March 2001 Another appointment with the consultant. I go along with one of my closest friends. The breast clinic is combined with the ear, nose and throat clinic. This strikes us as bizarre. There is a crowded waiting area, several busy smartly dressed receptionists, artificial lighting and a big box of wool. Apparently, the wool is there for any of us who want to knit a square while we wait. We laugh. There is such sadness in that waiting room. Such grief, yet my friend and I are laughing. It's as if our two unhappy souls can only cope by flipping the tragic reality over and knitting it into a comic Victoria Wood scenario.

I ask the consultant about a second opinion. She says I'm free to do this but in her view speed is vital in my case. She tells me about a procedure called 'staging', where one can have one's whole body screened to see if the cancer has spread before you agree to have the operation.

Afterwards, my friend and I go to a pub for lunch. I drink two double whiskies. So does he.

Friday 25 March 2001 A breast cancer research story is on the headlines of BBC news. I listen to the views of a professor who offers the opinion that women in some parts of the UK are being advised to have 'radical surgery' because there are not enough radiotherapy facilities. However, I don't live in one of those areas.

Nevertheless, the story scares me enough for me to surf the net to find out more about breast cancer and its treatment. I spend hours trawling through frightening websites with horrendous stories of lives lost, line diagrams of various types of mastectomy and life-chance bar charts, and all written in a language that I don't understand. Two or three British websites are helpful, but nevertheless I telephone Carol to weep.

Monday 28 March 2001 Powerless. The hospital phones to arrange an appointment with the consultant plastic surgeon who will perform the breast reconstruction. It seems as though my lump has now got a momentum of its own. I feel as if I am not in control of events. My lump and the NHS are hurtling me towards this operation. I find it difficult to concentrate on anything but my funeral arrangements, and it's hard to sleep. When I do, I wake up during the night and howl into the black, feeling lonely and mournful.

Tuesday 3 April 2001 Vanity. It might seem superficial to write about the way one looks in the same context as writing about having cancer, but I am distraught about losing a breast in terms of my sexuality. In the scheme of things, if I am going to survive this disease, I want to stroll into my future with a partner. I have been single for far too long.

I see the plastic surgeon. The words and the fears tumble out. How would any man love me? What would I look like? How would I tell them? What would they think? He sighed - he'd heard it all before. He says: 'Every man with any calibre that loves you now will continue to love you after the operation and every man that loves you in the future will love you whether or not you've had this operation.' Then he adds: 'If he did not love you, you wouldn't want him anyway.' Absolutely right.

Friday 6 April 2001 I go to the hospital and sign the operation consent forms. Now it's real.

Sunday 8 April 2001 Friends come to see me and we decorate the living room and it's all clean and new within the space of five hours. It feels like a positive thing to do, and a practical one too. A post-operation 'look after Linda' timetable has been organised by my daughter and my friends. Women, some of whom I haven't seen for years, have reorganised their family and working lives to care for me in the weeks that follow the operation. I feel overwhelmed and humbled by their kindness.

Wednesday 25 April 2001 It's my birthday. I am 53. Today I am having a mastectomy - what a gift. What a contradiction in this, the unkindest cut of all and the kindest cut if it should enable me to see more birthdays.

This morning a porter, a nurse and my daughter took me to theatre. When she was asked to leave, my daughter said: 'Remember, I love you Mum.' With those words I rose up from the trolley and said I'd changed my mind. I'd emotionally bonded with my lump. I'd even christened it Jessie.

I didn't want anyone to take her away and I certainly didn't want a brand new silicone Pamela Anderson. But that's what I got.

Thursday 26 April 2001 Everyone wants to see my new bosom - nurses, doctors, medical students, porters, catering staff, everyone bar me. I can't bear to look. I slip down my nightdress and watch others looking at me. I watch them intently for signs of disgust and horror, but all I see are people beaming.

'Very good, yes, very good,' says the consultant's registrar. He smiles at me. It's better than any tablet. 'I like the look of this patient,' he says to the group of students. 'Write it in her notes: she is wearing red lipstick.'

In that NHS hospital bed, during the days that follow, I am nurtured by nursing and medical staff, second to none. I listen to music on a personal stereo. I fall in love with Radio 4. I read books that I'd been meaning to read for years and discover new fiction genres. I learn that it is possible, while being swathed in bandages and balancing two drainage bottles, to paint one's toenails.

I play scrabble with my daughter in the hospital canteen and we talk about clothes, food, work and holidays in the sun. We don't talk about the forthcoming results of the pathologist's test on my lymph glands.

Tuesday 3 May 2001 Another room. My consultant, Carol and a nurse are there. My daughter sits next to me holding my hand. My consultant tells me that the lymph tests are clear. I hear my daughter gasp. We all, in one swift move, turn our attention towards her. Big, cylindrical tears roll. She has been so strong for me throughout these past weeks. Subsumed by my own fears, small attention has been given to how dreadful these days have been for her. Yet she has remained strong and brave and practical and positive.. I am indeed one lucky mother.

Summer 2002 I'm in my office. The window is ajar and I feel the breeze. I'm 54 going on 55. I have a glorious daughter, many friends and I'm in a new relationship with a handsome, big man.

Postscript I was given the option of having chemotherapy and decided against it. It was a huge decision that I may yet regret. I read as much information on chemotherapy treatment as I possibly could and I listened to the views of the consultant, the oncologist, my friends and family, but finally it was a personal decision. A a nipple was added to the new breast. Soon I'll get a tattooed aureola. Now that's what you call a real tattoo.