Brierley Hill friends united in their joint battle against cancer

Ginny was sipping cocktails in the sun and enjoying a holiday in Benidorm with husband Colin when she received the first shot of devastating news.

"Ginny, I've got some bad news, I've got cancer," said her best friend and neighbour Maggie over the phone.

"The routine scan showed up a tumour, I'm now getting the breast removed."

The news hit her like a hammer blow. Then, like a sixth sense, her thoughts turned to the results of her own mammogram, carried out before the holiday.

Her worst fears were realised when she returned home to Brierley Hill. There, on the kitchen cabinet, were two letters from Russells Hall Hospital.

"I knew straight away, there was not any doubt in my mind," says the 53-year-old.

"After what happened to Maggie and the letters at home, I knew, I just knew. My husband Colin tried to tell me it was nothing but a check on a cyst, but I knew.

"It was awful, a real week from hell, it felt like everything was coming down around me."

Ginny Weaver's fears were confirmed when she had a biopsy at the hospital and then a further meeting with a specialist who delivered the devastating news she had a tumour on her breast bone.

Meanwhile, Maggie Taylor by this stage had taken the option to go under the knife for a mastectomy, deciding to have the breast removed rather than risk her tumour growing further.

The 66-year-old had also been called for an appointment at Russells Hall Hospital following her mammography, taken a week before Ginny's. Following further tests, she, too, had been sat down by a specialist and told the news.

"When the doctor told me, I thought the world had stopped. I was there with my friend Anne Hewitt, and we broke down together, both of us crying. It was terrible," she said.

Maggie was then taken home in Planet Road, Brierley Hill, to her husband Barry.

"I walked in and told him and he broke down too. He says 'we will get through it, we have to'. But we cried all that first night, the next day too. I was in shock for a couple of weeks, it was always there in the back of my mind." When she found out Ginny also had breast cancer, she was left further saddened.

"I couldn't believe it. Three doors apart and a fortnight between the two of us. It took us both," she said.

But out of the instant shock and the beginning of each other's treatment for cancer, the friends say their relationship has strengthened as they set out determined to battle the disease together.

This week both women went through their third chemotherapy sessions. The pair accompany each other, being taken in the car by Ginny's husband Colin.

Their treatment will end at the beginning of next year and more tests will then be carried out to discover if the cancer has gone.

Maggie, a retired assembly worker from Bird Stevens in Quarry Bank, said: "This is something we have to do. We have to stay positive and do it together.

"We have lost our hair and she has given up work, but we have kept our friendship, and it has strengthened. That is important right now."

Ginny, who left her job – but hopes to return – as senior supervisor at The Copthorne Hotel in Brierley Hill, said: "We are unlucky, but lucky we have each other for support. We have both started well and we're really hopeful we can get through this."

Maggie and Ginny became friends when Maggie moved to Planet Road from Coppice Lane in Quarry Bank five years ago.

Last week, Maggie's brother-in-law, Les Taylor, aged 56, took part in a charity head-shave with friend Dennis Andrews at The Rose and Crown in Brierley Hill to raise money for Breast Cancer Research.

The pair raised £1,500 for the charity.

Les said: "It's a small thing for us to do in the scheme of things. Anything we can do to help the two get their minds off the cancer and have a laugh at us is good."