VIVA BIANCA 'Cancer changed me in ways Inever imagined'

For the first time, Neighbours actor Viva Bianca opens up about the health battle she faced and the strength she found in the community who rallied around her.

- SUE SMETHURST

There's a moment seared into Viva Bianca's mind, a precious sliver of time just before Christmas 2023 when the actress was in the car with her husband, Tony Beliveau, celebrating having just conquered the Christmas shopping.

It was four days before Santa's arrival and they could now relax and look forward to the inevitable squeals of delight from Vienna, then seven years old, and River, then five, when they unwrapped the couple's handiwork on Christmas morning.

But, that moment of festive bliss very quickly turned to despair, when the Neighbours' actor took a call from her doctor who was delivering the shock news - that she had breast cancer.

"I will never forget that day, it was the worst day of my life. She told me a biopsy had detected breast cancer. Her exact words were; 'Viva this is a really shit thing, and really shit timing... but you are going to be okay"," Viva recalls.

One month earlier, the 41-year-old had found a pea-sized lump in her left. breast after she'd wrapped filming the role of Chelsea. Murphy in Neighbours. Although her GP didn't think it was "nasty", when a mammogram was inconclusive, he sent her to a breast specialist for further testing to be sure.

After an ultrasound and examination, Viva's breast specialist agreed that it was unlikely to be anything to worry about, but as she'd had a benign lump the year prior, she'd need a biopsy to be 100 per cent certain. That biopsy revealed that, in fact, Viva had stage-one breast cancer.