RESTORING normality to your life can be difficult after fighting breast cancer – for some, it’s as big a battle as the disease itself.

But Jean Parr, 46, didn’t give up. Now, she’s turned things around and is looking forward to a new life with fiancé Vince, who looked beyond the effects of her illness to get down on one knee and propose.

Jean’s cancer story started aged 38 as a single woman.

She underwent a mastectomy, chemotherapy, preventative removal of the ovaries and in the end a total hysterectomy, leaving her unable to have children.

“I was pretty shocked to start with but quite positive. I got on the treadmill of cancer treatment and just took it one step at a time,” said Jean, who lives in West Park. “I had overwhelming support from family and friends, and I was well cared for at the Burney Breast Unit.”

Though she was given the all-clear in October 2003, the disease had had a resounding effect.

“There wasn’t a massive change; I was still the same person. It was just little things,” Jean said. “I knew I wasn’t going to go back to my workaholic ways after being out of work for so long so I used the excess energy I had to diversify. I went into charity work and a course in counselling.”

She met Vince in 2009 after eight years on her own at a photography course. What started out as a slow-burning friendship in which the pair collaborated on photography projects matured into romance.

“I decided to tell him my whole history. For me, it was a way of giving him the option to run before we’d got started. I didn’t want to get invested in a relationship to later find my unique body was going to be a problem.”

But love prevailed and Vince proposed this year, while the couple were on holiday in Hartland Key, Devon, to photograph the sunset. They are due to get married next year.

“My consultant surgeon said at the beginning of my treatment ‘you’re still you’,” Jean advised. “Cancer can depersonalise when suddenly you’re known as ‘the one who has cancer’, and you can lose yourself in the treatment, but it’s important to realise that you’re still yourself under all that.

“Whatever happens, take it one step at a time and you’ll get through it.”

For more information, please visit breastcancercare.org.uk. The site provides a huge range of advice and support, from diagnosis right through to moving forward.