A NEWPORT grandmother is hoping 2015 will see the end of her five year battle with cancer after losing the weight which helped her discover it.

The past five years has been a struggle for Janet Dawes, 53, of Newport, who lost nearly two and a half stone, battled breast cancer and lost her mum to kidney cancer after losing her father to stomach cancer back in 2008.

But Mrs Dawes now hopes 2015 will bring a turnaround in her story as she waits to see if she will be told she is in remission on March 26 this year.

Mrs Dawes, who lost her father Ronald Charles Price, 74, in 2008 and her mother Joan Price, 77, in October 2013, discovered a lump in her breast after losing a stone with weight loss group Slimming World which led her to discover she had breast cancer.

Following surgery to remove the lump at the at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport on April 6 2010, Mrs Dawes completed 15 sessions of radio therapy and has been taking drug Tamoxifen for the past five years.

Explaining her story: Mrs Dawes said: “I joined Slimming World five years ago in Katie Thomas’s group in Eveswell and lost my first stone in her group - that was when I noticed I had a lump in my breast.

“I thought it looked abnormal so I took some photos, which sounds strange, but I found the lump and then the doctors took me to have a mammogram and it turned out to be breast cancer."

The mother of two, who has seven grandchildren, will have her fifth mammogram this year.

She believes she owes her life to Slimming World.

The supervisor at Spar on Caerleon Road said she first joined the group weighing 12 stone 7lb and a dress size 16 and lived off a diet of skipping breakfast and snacking on crisps, chocolate and chips.

Mrs Dawes, who later moved to Beaufort Road Slimming World group run by Abby Wood, began to lose 1lb a week and now weighs her target of 10 stone 2.5lb and was nominated for Woman of the Year by her Slimming World group. She is now a size 12.

Since her treatment Mrs Dawes has been taking the drug Tamoxifen which meant she gained weight which was hard to shift and she became disheartened.

But she still managed to see some weight loss and is hoping to be able to come off the medication this March following her final appointment.

“If people say they are on medication for something and want to lost weight I would say to them just to bear with it and just persevere,” she added.

“I feel fantastic.

“I have confidence in myself and my whole life has changed.”

She added: “It’s fair to say that losing the weight through slimming world has saved my life,” she said.

“If I hadn’t have lost that stone I don’t think I would have noticed it [the lump]."