I’m Les Scaife and I’m 81 years old.

I live in Banks just outside of Southport.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer about four months ago and was treated from there.

My treatment is, at the moment, they’re hoping to shrink it down with Tamoxifen.

I did have an issue originally when the doctor first was asking me questions.

He asked me what my age was and I felt a bit intimidated,

or thought that I wasn’t going to get the treatment because of my age,

so I told him I would rather he treated my symptoms rather than my age.

He responded with ‘well, we have to make sure that you’re okay for an operation.’

And I said: ‘well, that’s a matter of fitness and not a matter of age.’

After we’d got that out the way and he reassured me that there was no issue around my age;

then we got on okay. And indeed the treatment has gone really really well.

I got the impression that if someone is as old as me they wouldn’t bother so much

and they may not give me the same treatment as someone who was young.

And I felt that wasn’t right.

So I wanted to make sure that I was going to get the same treatment as everybody else.

And they did reassure me that that was the case.

I feel great, I feel absolutely perfect.

I don’t feel that there is anything wrong.

I feel a lot of it is mind over matter. I just take no notice of it.

I work six days a week and get on with life.