I wake up and I've forgotten...then suddenly I remember I have cancer

Ex-Hollyoaks actress Ali Bastian speaks out about breast shock

- DAWN EMERY and MARK JEFFERIES

HOLLYOAKS actress Ali Bastian says she is in "total shock" after being diagnosed with stage two breast cancer.

Ali, 42, told OK! Magazine she was having weekly chemotherapy and early next year would get a single mastectomy and radiotherapy.

She told the magazine: "It was a total shock. I have mornings when I wake up and I've forgotten... and then suddenly I remember.

"I'm still trying to process it." Ali, who has appeared in the BBC One series Doctors and also competed in the seventh series of Strictly Come Dancing, found a lump when she was breast-feeding daughter Isabella.

Doctors thought it may be a blocked duct but when antibiotics failed to stop the soreness she went to a specialist clinic for tests and was told by a medic that she had cancer.

Ali said: "I could hear it in the tone of her voice but she told me in the kindest way possible. She was very reassuring.