Alice Harvey faced the prospect of a mastectomy head-on, only a week after finding a lump in her breast.

Her sons Peter and Paul were then teenagers and at the age of 40 she recovered well from the surgery in St Luke's Hospital, Bradford, needing no further treatment.

"The specialist said if it was cancer he would take one breast off, if it wasn't he would leave it. I said: 'If it's gone, it's gone'. When I woke up it was gone," remembers Alice, who is now 49.

But after several years, she had the trauma of the deaths of her father and grandfather, and a divorce from her first husband, all in the same year. And she believes her mental state affected her physically, letting her cancer return.

"It was the stress of it all. I found another lump on the same side and went to the specialist. He took the rest of it off," says Alice, who now lives at Baildon.

Courses of radiotherapy and chemotherapy followed, with Alice travelling to Cookridge Hospital in Leeds every day at times.

"If it wasn't for Mike, I wouldn't be here now," says Alice. "I wouldn't have had the hope."

After six months of living alone following her divorce, she was pretty depressed and lonely. Mike, twice divorced, was also living alone, in a bedsit in Armley, Leeds. Both joined the introductory agency Dateline - and as soon as they exchanged their first letter, felt they had plenty in common.

They shared the same love of music, dining out and walking - and their first meeting was in British Homes Stores car park in Bradford, where they went for a coffee in the caf! Says Alice: "We met and never looked back."

Mike has a dry sense of humour, pretending not to remember where the couple met or their telephone conversations in the early days. It is laughter, what she calls Mike's "silliness", which helped Alice through the difficult treatments after her second operation.

She not only had another lump on her chest but also had difficulty breathing - a problem which she found was caused by a tumour in her airway. Specialised laser treatment in Goole removed that tumour, but she also needed another operation to remove the 10 centimetre lump, which was the return of her cancer.

Alice is remarkably matter-of-fact about her illness, saying she had to go to Goole because doctors in Leeds couldn't reach the tumour in her airway with their "fishing rod".

Says Mike: "You have to accept what's going on, otherwise it's going to get hold of you." Alice adds: "I don't bother saying: 'Why me?' Once it gets hold of you, you've had it. You have to get on with your life and enjoy it."

She goes out each day and loves her sons, who are now 26 and 25, dearly. She and Mike are celebrating the birth of her first grandchild Abbie, born to Peter and his wife Val in Newcastle. It's a chance for Alice to spend more time on her hobby - knitting.

Alice and Mike's wedding last year was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but a special occasion for them. Her sons gave her away and gave her the rings during the ceremony.

"I asked Mike one day if he wanted to get married. He said: 'When?' and I said: 'Next Thursday, on my birthday,'" says Alice.

Mike adds: "I said if she wanted to do it, she would have to organise it!" Alice's mum rallied round and the day went well.

She attends the Cancer Support Centre at Daisy Hill, Bradford, every Wednesday afternoon, where there is a drop-in session for people with breast cancer. Alice enjoys the sociability of the sessions and helps other women facing the same diagnosis as she has lived with for so many years.

And Mike did a sponsored walk on the canal bank between Leeds and Liverpool, which took three days and raised about £400 for the centre.

He says: "I wanted to do it because of all Alice has been through. I wanted to give something back."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.