A woman who lived in Tullibody most of her life is hoping to inspire people with breast cancer having managed to defeat the disease.

Marion France (71), who now lives in Cambusbarron, was diagnosed with life-threatening breast cancer five years ago.

However, the fitness instructor managed to pull through thanks to incredible specialist doctors, nurses, her close family and family at Stirling Baptist Church, as well as the emotional support she received from Breast Cancer Care Scotland.

Marion hopes to raise as much as possible for the charity before she models with 21 others at its annual flagship event, The Breast Cancer Care Show Scotland, in November.

In 2010 she was out rambling when she felt a pain in her left shoulder. Marion visited her GP and within two weeks she was given the terrible news. To survive she had to go ahead with a mastectomy as well as chemo and radiotherapy, during which she lost a stone-and-a-half.

Marion was due to go on a family holiday before she found out she had breast cancer, but cancelled after receiving her diagnosis. She told the Advertiser: “It just cuts you like a knife. I was always walking, keeping fit, but it just cuts you and you are saying ‘oh no’.

“When I was in one of the rooms with one of the doctors, I don’t know if it was a scan or not he was doing, but I saw this black mass inside me [on the screen].

“It was just so frightening, so then it just went pretty fast after that, really fast.” Her close family, husband Robert (73), children Fiona (50), Valerie (47) and John (35); grandchildren Samantha (27), Leigh (24), Jack (24), twins Katie and Molly (18), David (15), James (3); and great grandkids Miley (4) and Aria (6 months), helped her through the fight, which felt like a “blur” she said.

Marion suffered internal bleeding in her stomach and came very close to death, before ultimately defeating her illness.

She continued: “When I got a mastectomy – that was awful. It wasn’t painful, it was just the realisation that you were kind of losing a part of you. Then, with the bleeding ulcers, I went unconscious not once, but twice. And I had to get 15 pints of blood, I was so ill. I went from eight stone to six-and-a-half stone.

“Chemo is a terrible thing, it’s like you get a metallic taste in your mouth and nothing tastes good, nothing. That’s why I couldn’t eat, because I couldn’t enjoy any food at all.” She went to the charity’s annual show in 2010 with her daughters, but at this point she was so ill she was rushed to hospital unconscious the next day.

She added: “I went about this illness in a blur. It just seemed to go in a blur, because I was so ill. But when I got home, and looked around and started crying I went ‘yeah, I am home’.

“But I couldn’t have pulled through without these specialist doctors. They were marvellous - the doctors and nurses were just fantastic to me. My church prayed for me, the second time I took ill – the bleeding ulcers started up again – they thought that was it, I wouldn’t pull through, but they prayed anyway.” Marion said the charity’s befriending service helped her greatly during bad times. While her family was there to support her, they did not completely understand what she was going through.

She added: “This girl [on the phone at the charity], she would befriend me and when I was so low she would talk me through because she had been through it. That was really good for me.” While Marion was getting better in 2011, her husband Robert, who used to be a joiner and is now a caretaker, was also diagnosed with bowel cancer.

He also nearly died a couple of times, but managed to pull through and now he is also helping Marion with her fundraising efforts. They celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in March last year.

The 71-year-old cancer survivor will be taking to the catwalk for the first time at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Glasgow on 4 November at the charity show, which marks the end of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

To support her fundraising efforts, visit justgiving.com/marion-france.

Visit breastcancercare.org.uk.