One of the banned photos Sharon posted on Facebook. ‘I wanted to get a message out to women to check their breasts and not to be ashamed of mastectomy’, she said

Breast cancer survivor Sharon Adams has won a battle against the social networking website, Facebook, which had placed a ban on her page for putting photos of her mastectomy scars.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer in January of this year, 45-year-old Adams said, “It was like the breath had been sucked out of me.  I had this really horrible feeling inside,” but once those feelings subsided, the mother of four decided to bring awareness to the horrible disease.

She placed pictures of her scars on Facebook, along with details of her fight against the disease and encouragement to other women to go and get regular check-ups.

A day after posting the pictures, the social networking site removed the photos saying they were “sexual and abusive.”

Immediately after the photos were removed, nearly 900 people joined online groups calling for the ban to be lifted, hailing Adams as a “brave lady” and questioned how the photos could be deemed offensive.

Since the complaints, Facebook, which has over 120 million members, has apologized to Adams and admitted to making a mistake.

From her home in the U.K., Adams said, “I put these pictures out on Facebook to put a message out to women, check your breasts regularly and do not ever be ashamed of a mastectomy.  For Facebook to claim they were “sexual and abusive” was absurd.  There is nothing sexual about them.”

“Facebook has groups about sexual positions and some groups which are bordering on racist but they ban this.  All I want to do is raise awareness of breast cancer.”

Adams said she thought about her children and grandchildren when she was first diagnosed.

“Breaking the news to the girls was worse than hearing I had cancer,” she said. “I’d been playing down the tests beforehand so as not to worry them but there was no escaping it.”

Less than one month after being diagnosed, doctors removed her right breast.  “I don’t miss my breast.  I wanted to live,” she said.

Adams is planning to remove her second breast in the near future to improve her chances of survival.