‘I was given a pink prosthetic breast that did not match my skin tone’

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Ms Mattoo, who lives in south Birmingham, said: “It hit me when I would be wearing something and the actual thing would fall out and it would gape and be obvious – then you think I can’t wear what I want to wear.” The 45-year-old, who is on cancer medication, said she would have had better mental health if she had been given the right breast prosthesis as she recounted how there had been no mention of the colour and only talk of matching the size and shape. Dee Mattoo during chemo: ‘I would put it down to ignorance’ Charlotte Crowl, project lead at Black Women Rising, which campaigns on this issue, said: “If a wig or prosthesis is offered to match someone’s colour or hair for one race, it should be offered to all races.” Ms Crowl said the Royal Marsden, which has a hospital in London and Surrey, is the only place she knows with a variety of sized prostheses for women of colour, adding that other places may have prosthetics but of limited sizes, options and colours. “It makes you feel like you don’t count and our voices don’t count and we do.” Melanie Bastien chose to forgo a wig in the end Steven McIntosh, of Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “The experience talked about here by Melanie Bastien is unacceptable, and this story demonstrates that too many Black women continue to have their cancer journeys made even more difficult without the right care and support. There is an unconscious bias – it’s like they didn’t see me.” Sophia Jones: ‘They only had one afro and it was grey’ Manveet Basra, of Breast Cancer Now, said it is “vital that women of colour are not expected to wear, or only offered, a wig or prosthesis that is unsuitable for their personal skin tone”.