Childhood cancer survivor becomes Plymouth funeral director

Ayesha Slader said she wanted to learn what had happened to her friends after they died

A 28-year-old who survived cancer as a child has said she became a funeral director after losing friends who were also battling the disease.

Ayesha Slader was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 14. After treatment she went into remission in 2007.

She said she asked to visit a funeral directors a few years later as she wanted to know what would happen to friends after they died.

"I needed to know they were looked after and still OK," she said.

Following her visit to Pengelly Funeral Directors in Saltash in 2009, Ms Slader, from Plymouth, spent five years training as a funeral director before securing a permanent position in the same company.

She said the "hardest part" of her illness was "meeting so many other young people that had the same journey or a harder journey".

Ms Slader started having chemotherapy when she was 14

Ms Slader said: "I really struggled with why I was OK, why I was alive to have that second chance and why they didn't get that."

She explained it was also important to her to find out the families of people who died were "given help and support, because they really needed it the most".

Ms Slader said the image of funeral directors as an "old man, the top hat, the nice suit" is "changing quite a lot".

"Women and young people, like myself, are being welcomed into the profession."

The 28-year-old was able to gain a permanent position at the funeral directors she had first visited

Ms Slader's mother, Sonia, died of a chest infection after suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (CPOD) in 2018 and she took up playing rugby to help cope with the loss.

She said: "You'd think dealing with death all the time would mean I'd be in pretty good stead with losing someone.

"And being poorly, I've lost a lot of people that way too, but I wasn't expecting it to hit me as hard as it did.

"I couldn't function properly, I was angry and mad, I needed an outlet."

Ms Slader said she "couldn't function properly" after losing her mother nearly three years ago

Ms Slader found local rugby team Plymstock Albion Oaks and turned up at a training session knowing no-one there and never having played the sport before.

"But for the first time in those six months, I didn't feel angry or upset, just for the hour I was there," she said.

"I have taken so much from this sport and from this group of women, that aren't just there as teammates, they're there as my friends."