Jools Topp sang in public on Friday night – for the first time since she was diagnosed with breast cancer in August. "She still sounds pretty good to me," twin sister Lynda Topp told the Herald on Sunday. "Jools is fine. She's good. She's doing pretty good - Monday is her last chemo." The public appearance - the first time in eight months the Topp Twins have appeared on stage - was to raise money for other breast cancer patients. It follows Jools Topp's own gruelling fight against the disease. She found a lump while having a shower in January last year. A mammogram then gave her the all-clear, but Jools felt something was wrong and went back in July for a second test, which showed the cancer. She had a mastectomy in early October. The 48-year-old's left breast and lymph nodes were removed in the operation, which was followed up with about three weeks of "aggressive chemotherapy". As out lesbians since 1977, the Topp Twins have always been visible and proud about their sexual identity. “We are taking a known lesbian act and we're putting it on primetime TV and we're getting mums and dads and kids to watch it", Jools says on the Topp Twins website. Jools is interviewed in the Woman's Weekly this week – saying she now has a scar stretching from under her left arm to the middle of her chest - and would wear it proudly. "This is who I am now... If that helps other women, so be it." Ref: Herald on Sunday, GayNZ.com (m)
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Sunday, 18th February 2007 - 12:00pm