When she faced surgery to remove a tumour in her right breast, she wanted to be able to carry on wearing evening dresses and a bikini.

Thanks to a pioneering new surgical technique, she is able to do so.

This reconstruction is actually a huge step forward in terms of emotional and psychological well-being

Surgeons reconstructed her breast using a silicone implant and a flap of skin from her back.

"It returns you to normality," she says. "It's helped my sense of femininity enormously."

Helen would like to share with other women the message that breast cancer can be cured.

And she is not afraid of revealing her scar, if it helps trainee surgeons learn about the new procedures.

"I'd like to tell people not to be so afraid," she says. "For younger women, I would say with this new type of surgery there's so much that they can do."

Emotional health

When Helen's tumour was discovered during a routine mammography, it took her three months to decide to go through with surgery.

Two relatives had had breast cancer and she remembers them covering up in buttoned-up blouses to hide prostheses.

"This reconstruction is actually a huge step forward in terms of emotional and psychological well-being," she adds. "I would have had a lot more loss and grieving if I had not had this new breast."

Helen is now being considered for mastopexy, a technique to lift the breast.

After breast feeding twins, she feels she needs surgery on her left breast so the new and the old one are better matched.

But she says many women are still unaware that such techniques are possible. She says only one in four women she meets has even heard about it.

Main image courtesy of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.