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Lucy Davis, best known for playing Dawn Tinsley opposite Martin Freeman's Tim Canterbury in the BBC sitcom The Office, has disclosed that she is living with incurable stage-four breast cancer.
Diagnosis shared on Instagram
The actor, 53, posted the news on Instagram on Tuesday, explaining she had been told she had stage-four breast cancer around 18 months ago after finding a "really tiny" hard spot in her breast. The Shaun of the Dead star wrote that the cancer had since metastasized and spread to her bones including her spine, right hip and ribs.
Davis shared her message alongside a video in which she could be seen smiling as she rung the bell in hospital to signal the end of treatment. However, she wrote in the caption, "the cancer is incurable, and too late for chemo".
Facing the disease with humour
"As of now, I'm trying to live out whatever might be left of my life in as fun a way as I possibly can," she said. "I always like to find the teachable moments in anything negative that happens. And cancer has not disappointed in that regard; there's a lot I have learned from it, and I'm grateful for that."
Davis explained that the pain had been the hardest thing to deal with, and that she sometimes now used a wheelchair. "The thing that has been most vital to me is humour," she wrote. "I asked my friends and family to make fun of me as much as possible (which they're really good at [eye-roll emoji]), and most importantly of all to not treat me like a sick person. There's nothing that will make you feel more unwell than being treated as if you're unwell."
The daughter of comedian Jasper Carrott, Davis rose to prominence in the early 2000s with the original UK version of The Office, a role that earned her a BAFTA nomination.