TWINS from Bradford who both beat the same rare cancer 15 years apart are urging people to help a research charity save more lives.

Helen Wagstaff and Deborah Montgomery, who grew up in Great Horton and are now 39, are telling their survival story to support World Cancer Day today.

In April 1991, when they were 13, their lives suddenly took a different path when Helen was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma.

Desperate to be “normal” and despite chemotherapy for eight months at Seacroft Hospital in Leeds, Helen (nee Birkenshaw) battled sickness to go to school every day, which was hard for her sister to watch.

“I felt really hopeless because I could not take it away from her, couldn’t make her better,” said Deborah.

Eventually the cancer treatment ended and after getting the all-clear, life returned to normal.

Helen and Deborah, who now lives at Knowles Park in Holme Wood, both got married 13 years ago to men in the Armed Forces. Then, in 2006 when Deborah was aged 28 and trying for a baby, she noticed a lump on her neck.

Tests delivered the devastating news that it too was Hodgkin Lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system which around 1,950 people are diagnosed with in the UK each year.

Helen, who lives in Lincolnshire, waited while her sister was in the consultation room.

She said: “When coming back with the chemo nurse, the consultant got us mixed up, introducing me to the nurse then telling me that I had cancer. I said it wasn’t me, it’s my sister, who is still in your office! I was left there thinking ‘oh gosh, she’s got it too’.”

Deborah, who underwent a six-month course of intravenous chemotherapy and has now had the all-clear, said: “I knew what was ahead of me as I’d seen Helen get through it all those years ago. I just saw it as something I had to now get through myself.

"It would be over in six months and I would then be back to normal. But because Helen was living further away, it was harder for us both this time. Unlike Helen, I lost all my hair. It was the first time we really looked unlike each other.”

Helen said: “For me there was no doubt she was going to get through it like I had, because we did everything together.

“This was just something else we were going to do together, to both beat cancer, albeit 15 years apart, because that’s what we do. It was heads down, let’s get on with it.”

Now with children of their own, they are supporting Cancer Research UK’s work.

“Thanks to research, we’re both still here,” said Deborah.

MORE TOP STORIES