I'm Chrystalla Spire and I was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2005.
Even though I was surrounded by people who were concerned for me, I felt very isolated because I knew ultimately I would have to actually face it myself and deal with it myself.
I had a grade 3 tumour; I had what was known as invasive lobular.
They told me that I was going to have radiotherapy and at the end of that process which was the end of November, they told me that my risk of recurrence was up to about forty percent and that there were two ways that they could deal with it.
Either I could be monitored closely every 3 to 6 months for the rest of my life or I could have a bilateral mastectomy. That was a great shock but I instantly knew it was the right thing to do.
Because I knew I couldn’t live the rest of my life with this cloud over my head.
My girls were shocked, they were, it took a little bit more convincing for them to feel comfortable with my decision. It's a huge, huge operation.
It takes about 10 hours. They effectively skin you from your neck to your breastbone so they can get rid of all the breast tissue and they take your nipples away. And the operation I had was known as an L V Flap where they take the lateral dorsal muscle from your back, bring it forward and they rest the implant on the back muscle.
Well I didn't know whether I would still look like a woman or feel like a woman and I wasn’t sure how I would deal with the outcome.
But actually from the moment I woke up and I looked down and I thought I still had something there I’ve never looked back from that moment.
Well Bosom Buddies Trust was a concept that arose in the Ellis Ward in the Royal Marsden Hospital.
Once we put the word out that we were going to create a calendar of women who'd had mastectomies, people flocked to us.
We have 3 sisters in the calendar, one of whom who's had breast cancer and the other two who had preventative because their mother, aunt and an older sister all died from breast cancer.
And that's a fairly remarkable story. The 2 sisters who had preventative went in to hospital together and they had the operation done on the same day.
There was also Sarah who was diagnosed in the middle of a pregnancy, which was unbearably hard for her.
But she's an incredible girl; she doesn’t even want any reconstruction, she won't even wear prosthesis. She just walks around with one side flat and one side not.
It was just fantastic, it was just really brilliant and I'm so proud of being a calendar girl. I love my photograph.
I have the boobs of a 16 year old and they're going to stay like this forever. I don't quite know what it'll be like when I'm 70 and they're still all perky but hey, we'll see.
Hopefully I'll still be around to tell the tale.
View Chrystalla's video.