Former Coronation Street star Victoria Ekanoye, who played Angie Appleton, the daughter-in-law of fan favourite Mary Taylor (Patti Clare), on the long-running ITV soap between 2017 and 2019, has admitted her battle with breast cancer has changed her. Following her departure, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ), in October 2021, just months after giving birth to her "miracle" son, Theo. She discovered a lump in her breast while feeding him, which ultimately led to her undergoing a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction surgery.

Asked how her experience has changed her outlook on life and work, she said: "I'm very acutely aware of how quickly my son is growing up, and my time with him I can never get back. So I'm really strategic about the work I do. It has also spurred me on to develop my own projects, because I want to be able to dictate when and where I work, take him along with me sometimes, and put the correct messages into the projects I'm doing that will then go out to the world."

She continued: "We're very lucky as artists — whether we act, sing, direct or produce — to be able to send messages out to the world in our own little way, make it a bit better than it was when we arrived. I really want my son to grow up and be able to have a smile on his face when he sees whatever legacy I've left.

"He's incredibly special, and he's been through a lot to be here. He's a huge driving force for me," she said in a chat with BestBettingSites, home of the best casino sites.

Victoria's diagnosis came during the Covid lockdowns, and she admits the pandemic restrictions just added to an already stressful period.

"The main emotion I felt was anger before anything else. Not fear or worry. Anger. I thought: really? COVID is here, we've just had a baby, it's already tough, we had a really tough birth, my partner wasn't sure if he was going to go home with either one of us.

"Theo was six months old when I found the lump, and I was breastfeeding. I have a really strong family history, I'm the fifth person in my family to develop breast cancer, my mum being one of them.

"And then my partner's mum had just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I kind of thought: what will my partner do if he loses me and his mum? It's unimaginable," she reflected.

"Two things kept me going," she confessed. "One was: I have far too much to achieve. I have a baby to raise, and I'm a huge cog in our whole machine. I had to be strong enough to get through it so that nobody else needed to worry. And the other thing is I refuse to become a victim of what happens to me. I'm not a result of my adversities — I'm a result of my triumphs.

"I wanted this to be the same. I had an incredible support network: my mum, my sister, my partner, my best friends. They knew I'd try to do everything alone, they knew I was stubborn. But they just created that safety net underneath me, just in case I fell. And I'm forever grateful for that."