The Reality of Breast Cancer Young: Surrender, Privilege, and Making Hard Choices

When Intuition Speaks

It was a few years after I took my breast implants out. I lay down on a massage table and I felt it. Hard tissue where softness should be. An adjustment to get comfy, a single thought of concern and an instant dismissal. There is no way, after everything I went through with breast implant illness, removal and recovery, that I have something else wrong with my breasts. I cannot, so I will not. I walked past the Breast Screen Australia bus multiple times. "Go in there" my intuition whispered, "you're too young, they are for older women!" my mind yelled.

So I trucked on, busy with the closing of chaos cycles that had been cranking in my family line and my DNA for centuries. Too busy for this body. Too caught up to care. Taking care of anyone and everyone around me, except for myself. I still had men at the centre of my world, their needs, validation, opinions, gaze and grip on my sanity. I was not anchored to myself but to whatever phallus was around. Dangerous.

I had been swept up into another love bomber's promises and poison. I drank it thirstily and with lucidity. "He is a narcissist," I thought, "I am in trouble here," but my system was addicted. I went in fully in order to get out, get it out of my cells for good, eyes open, ready to heal. I moved to Tasmania both to break the energy between us and to break the energy between myself and all the ways I had contorted myself to cope. A fresh start.

The Body's Desperate Signals

I started doing yoga, eating well, caring for my body. She had a lot to say, I had been away a while. “I’m sorry, I’m here now, I hear you” I would whisper, tears streaming down my face in Shavasana. My underarm started hurting as the "scar tissue" became more and more present in my day to day. I started to try and find manual scar therapists to help me with it. The dog I was taking care of started to take an interest in my right breast like it was holding treats within. He pawed and sniffed at it until one day he stood right on it, as if to say "take notice of this, woman!"

I booked in for my mammogram, I called my girlfriends, "It's nothing right? I'll be fine, I know I will be." The day came an agonising 6 weeks later (their earliest appointment) and I left my referral at home. I wasn't keen to pay the $400 and considered just leaving it. As soon as the machine crushed my breast within its metal plates and tears left my eyes unannounced I knew. The ultrasound machine and warm gel slid across my bare chest. "This is something that will need to be managed, I will get the doctor." Someone else came in with them. Two people, I thought, perfect. A hand came and rested on my arm with a compassion I felt I didn't want in that moment. With compassion comes bad news.

The biopsy was an emergency apparently to happen that afternoon, kicked out some poor other women who had appointments. I was alone, I had to get the guy I was dating to take me. High on valium I went in, the puncture into my breast so violent it left a deep bruise, the tumour sample like a tiny worm in the jar. I was laughing, numb, shocked.

Facing the Impossible Decision

My doctor called to make the appointment with the hospital and said they were concerned that I didn't know my diagnosis, that I seemed too calm. How was I supposed to feel, I wondered. It was a surreal world to be plunged into suddenly, in a new land, without my people around. I also knew, there was no way out but through. I have to be strong, and I found out just how strong I actually am, and how that comes directly from my ability to be soft, supple, let life flow through me and to listen. My Auntie flew to be with me while I waited for the next steps. Distraction helps, support saves, I know that now.

Surgery was to be done within 30 days, that is the law in Tasmania and I wasn't here to argue. The surgeon explained they would be taking out the lump, three lymph nodes and reconstructing my breast. Do I want implants or to talk about fat transfer? Er, neither? Looking at the scars from my explant I couldn't believe we were here again. Slicing into my young flesh, my heart. No mention that going flat was actually a totally valid, beautiful choice. And if any woman is reading this now and considering their reconstructive choices, I love my flat chest now. My scars, as unsightly to conventional beauty standards as they are, remind me daily of my tenacity. As someone who has bowed down to the male gaze and nearly died from breast implants and now cancer, you are so precious, it is not worth it.

Surgery was a success, my female surgeon played on her phone as I was wheeled in and I thought “she’s got this, no worries”. Like every other woman, from my GP, radiologists, oncologists and nurses. These women HAD ME. I love them so much and will never be able to repay them. As I quietly cried being put to sleep, the woman anaesthetist put her hand on mine, grace. I willed the pain and heartbreak, all the self-neglect, moments I needed nurturing and softness yet was met with harsh criticism, all of the abuse, sadness and grief, it was to go into that tumour. Cut it out. Get it all out. I woke up to a gay nurse offering me Valium and giggles. Relief.

The results came back and I was to meet with two oncologists, one deals with Chemo and Medical Therapy, the other Radiation. A team of doctors was given my case and came up with a treatment plan. Surgery, Chemo, Radiation, Hormone Therapy for 10 years. Freeze your eggs, inject your ovaries for 5 years every month to keep them "asleep", go into menopause, regain your fertility and period (maybe) at 40. "Your cancer may be out, but you are so young, and it was very aggressive. If it comes back, it will be much worse and you are likely to not survive." Oh.

I knew I was so dysregulated. I was in no state to be making a decision but one had to be made. Do I even want kids? Can I have them? How can I make this choice in 2 weeks? Any of these choices?! I got some wise counsel and got as grounded as possible. My cousin said to me, "I feel like you're trying to make a perfect decision where there isn't one." And they were so right. I had to surrender to the risk of any road I took. I had to take responsibility for my life: deeply.

No one else to blame if I made the wrong choice and met my untimely demise. But if you can survive, facing these choices and mortality offers the healing balm of surrender. The freedom, truly, of realising that we're here now. No draft copy, no practice run. Go forth and fuck up! I've had a beautiful life and intend to keep going that way. And no matter what I choose, I now have a new companion to dance through life with. A hovering fear, peaking and settling, everpresent.

The Privilege Behind Treatment Options

Coming from a holistic health background and having had many run-ins with the medical system and its various failings throughout my life, I expected if I ever got cancer that I would try as much as possible to deal with it as naturally as possible. But in this position, having been through a hellish few years that plunged me into poverty, that was not a choice I could make.

I feel it's important when making treatment decisions to be aware that privilege does play a role. I didn't have the money, stamina or time to go down the natural path even if I was sure that was the direction I would go in. I could barely afford the $400 mammogram. I would have LOVED to have been able to see my holistic team in conjunction with the public system, but I couldn't.

When pushing an all-natural approach (and in an old life I was guilty of this ignorance too), it's so important to be aware of systemic factors. A single mother without a strong support system would not be able to stop work to fly to Mexico, or go to an oxygen chamber, or even afford supplements. The public health system can be the only option for a lot of people, and we really need to hold compassionate space for that.

We have a long way to go to bring safe, integrative medicine into the mainstream, and in the meantime I don't think it's helpful to push shame-inducing rhetoric to women who are already going through it.

Finding My Path Through Treatment

I do feel that the healthcare system is incredibly flawed, and the treatments can come with a whole host of dangerous side effects of their own. I went deeply into each of them, and it was distressing to feel like I didn't have a choice either way but to face risk. The surrender into the truth of life, we have very little control. There was also some relief, after a lifetime of complicated health issues, this one was simple-ish. I didn't need to see 5 different practitioners, try a thousand supplements, too sick to work, struggling financially for months or years of my life while I take a stab at what might work. They had the answer, it was simple, it was free and they could show me the results for other women on my little printed out chart. Only 25 out of 100 women like me died within 15 years when they did all of it, great I guess?

In the end the Chemo and all the side effects that came with it, the fertility issues, wasn't impactful enough for my future survival to go down that road so we canned it. Radiation felt smart in my case, the hormone blockers I am still not sure. I am only now, 5 months post treatment able to start working slowly again. I have to get back out there, ready or not. I support myself, I am on my own, I love my independence but it's not easy when you're down. Bless my family and girlfriends to the core of their beings, they are incredible, but the day to day solo wears me out. It's a lot to hold. Heading into another treatment that will mimic menopause sounds horrible. I want to be free. But the reality is that I am not free, not yet, not ever.

I can feel the treatment fatigue, the exhaustion changed form all the time: shock exhaustion, surgery exhaustion, radiation exhaustion and now heading into temporary potential medication exhaustion, I am resisting. But this message from my body came to keep me on track, to remind me to take care of me, to nurture, to be present with life, that we are all dying, none of it matters, and yet it all matters more than ever, deeply. And in the meantime, this vessel is what life moves through. I want it to be vital, I need to play the long game.

I will work with a natural health practitioner too, I intend to braid these things together to stop it coming back. I have made the lifestyle changes, the semi-sobriety, the centring of my wellbeing, the Tasmania of it all. I am emotionally free, and I am not the same person who got cancer. And yet, I must always be vigilant, loving and not get complacent. For someone who spent most of their life hanging outside their body, this is a gift.

There are realities for many though, who will not be able to go down that path, whose outcomes will not be the same as mine. Who don't have access to all the many layers of healing I have through this process, women who are fighting to survive every day and can barely afford healthy food. I have cried many times for these women, I know how they feel and it is a helplessness that is devastating. I pray they make it through.

The Alchemy of Facing Mortality

There is something alchemical in nature when facing our mortality, truly. Any near death experience I listen to, they come back from the edge with the same messages, ones that I feel are so integrated now into my being. All that matters is love, expressing our heart, creativity, connecting with others and the earth and being present with the mystery, the miracle. I have a freedom I can't really explain except through these clichés so I apologise if it all sounds a little washed out but it is simply true. We are meaning-making machines, and what I have come to discover is the meaning that has been infused into this blink of time we are here. I needed this. I am sure on some level I called it in. Cancer saved me.

In the next posts I will go into the powerful shift I experienced over this time with men, relationships, patriarchy, capitalism and the ways women internalise this and express it through the mother and sister wound. How healing this separation and seeing it for what it is, is the ultimate reclamation. I hope you can join me.