This is a little different from what I usually share here.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and having been through breast cancer twice, I wanted to share my story. Not because I think it's particularly remarkable, but because I know how easy it is to put off something we're afraid of.
If sharing my experience encourages even one woman to book the screening she's been avoiding, it will have been worth telling.
We are remarkably good at convincing ourselves that something won't happen to us.
Especially when we're healthy, relatively young, and have no family history to suggest otherwise.
I certainly was.
Breast cancer wasn't something I'd ever imagined on my path. My family had been fortunate with good health, and I had every reason to believe I would be too.
But there was something else going on in my life that I hadn't fully understood.
By my mid 30s, I had spent years living with enormous personal stress. The circumstances aren't important to this story, but the effect on my mind and body is.
I had become so accustomed to living in a heightened state of anxiety that I barely recognised it anymore. I was rarely truly present. My mind was always racing, my body seemingly permanently in fight-or-flight mode. I was scatty, disorganised and constantly rushing.
And the thing is, when you've lived like that for long enough, it feels normal.
Perhaps some of you will recognise that feeling. You're getting through your days, managing your family, doing what needs to be done. From the outside, life carries on. But inside, you're running on something that feels very close to empty.
After years of therapy, my psychologist insisted I see a psychiatrist. I resisted. In the world I lived in, medication, even prescribed medication, was strongly frowned upon.
Eventually, at 35, I reached a point where I couldn't ignore what my body was telling me. I was genuinely afraid that living under such sustained stress would eventually make me seriously ill. I remember thinking that I was heading for a heart attack or breast cancer. I had no medical reason to make that connection, but I knew the state I was living in couldn't be good for my health.
I went to the psychiatrist because I wanted to protect my health.
I was diagnosed with extreme anxiety, mild depression and adult ADHD. The medication was life-changing, at least for a while.
Eighteen months later, however, the circumstances of my life hadn't changed. The stress was still there, although I was managing it in a slightly less frenetic way.
And then October came around.
Pink October.
Pink ribbons around trees. Radio advertisements. Magazine features. Posters. Reminders everywhere.
I remember feeling irritated by it all.
Looking back, I wonder whether that irritation was actually fear. Not a fear I could name, but something uncomfortable enough that I wanted to turn away from it.
Because surely, I wasn't the woman they were talking to?
I was fit, lean, young. I barely drank, didn't smoke, had breastfed three babies and had no family history of breast cancer.
In my mind, I simply wasn't a candidate.
And yet, throughout October, all that pink kept catching my attention.
Eventually, I decided I might as well check my breasts, myself.
It's extraordinary to me now how long I had avoided doing something so simple.
On that very first basic home check, I felt a tiny bump. A little nodule. Nothing dramatic, but there was nothing similar on the other side.
I remember that moment.
A silent red flag went up somewhere inside me.
And almost immediately, I pressed pause on further investigation.
December holidays were approaching. Plett was calling. Life was busy, and I had a perfectly good collection of reasons why this was probably nothing.
So I put it into that familiar mental file.
Not likely. Check later.
January came, and I finally booked the appointment.
In my head, it was going to be a non-event. Something I would tick off the list and move on from. Although, looking back, I think I was secretly frightened.
Even the doctor was confident that there was nothing to worry about. But she decided to do a biopsy, just to be sure.
That afternoon, she called and asked me to come back.
It wasn't benign.
I remember walking into her rooms and trying to take in what she was telling me.
It was cancer.
I hadn't seen it coming.
I was so young. A mother of three little children. How could this possibly be happening to me?
It was shocking and frightening.
What followed was one of the scariest periods of my life. There were tests, staging, waiting for results, waiting to understand exactly what we were dealing with.
I remember feeling as though I was standing at the edge of an abyss. You don't yet know how deep it is, or what lies ahead.
And everyone around you is frightened too.
People rally around you with such kindness and concern, which is lovely, of course. But there's something quite terrifying about seeing just how worried everybody is. Their fear somehow confirms the enormity of what you're facing.
Thank goodness for my mother.
She has the driest sense of humour, is wonderfully matter-of-fact and is almost impossible to rattle. She had a way of keeping me grounded when everything around me felt so enormous.
Eventually, we had a treatment plan.
I had a lumpectomy, radiation and was prescribed Tamoxifen.
I also spent time trying to understand my diagnosis, the possible outcomes and the treatment options available to me. I needed to make sense of what was happening rather than simply be carried along by it.
And here's something I want to share, particularly with women who are frightened of what a diagnosis might mean.
It wasn't pleasant. Of course it wasn't.
But it wasn't the end of the world either.
I was enormously grateful that I was not prescribed chemotherapy in that round. My radiation treatment was stopped before the side effects became too painful, and I managed reasonably well.
Tamoxifen was another story. I found it absolutely dreadful. The effect it had on my quality of life was so significant that, after giving it considerable thought, I decided to stop taking it. My doctor understood my decision and was comfortable with the treatment I had already received.
That was my personal experience and a decision made with my doctor. Treatment is different for everyone, and these are not decisions to make without medical guidance.
But I tell you this because, when we're frightened, our minds have a way of racing ahead to the very worst possibilities.
And sometimes the reality, although difficult, is something we can navigate, one step at a time.
Four years passed.
For a while, life had become a little easier. Some of the pressures had eased, and I felt as though I could breathe again.
But gradually, things reverted, and I found myself carrying much of the same stress I had lived with before.
Almost four years after my first diagnosis, I found a second lump. Another primary. In other words, not seeded by the previous lump.
Of course it was shocking. It was frightening, and it certainly wasn't good news. But this time, the fear wasn't quite so paralysing.
I was better educated. I understood more about the possible outcomes and the treatment options available to me. I didn't walk into the doctor's rooms with quite the same desperate feeling of please, save me.
I listened carefully, asked questions, considered my options and made my own decisions.
I don't think I need to go into all those choices here, but I do want to say that the care I received was exceptional. I remain forever grateful for the advice, expertise and compassion of the people who looked after me.
This time, I had a bilateral mastectomy. I was 39 years old.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, I knew something else had to change.
For some years I had already associated my health with the extraordinary stress I was living under. Whether that stress had anything to do with my cancer, is not a simple question. But I knew what it was doing to me, and I didn't want to carry on living that way.
I needed to reclaim my life.
So I made some big changes.
They weren't easy. In fact, they made life considerably more stressful in the beginning. But for the first time in a long time, I knew where I was going.
And that, in itself, felt like I could breathe.
There is something about feeling that you are driving your own life, even when the road ahead isn't easy.
The world is a beautiful place. But it's a great deal easier to look up and appreciate it when you're not constantly overwhelmed by the circumstances of your own life.
And so, here I am.
This November will mark twelve years since that second diagnosis.
It propelled me onto a path of reclaiming my life, making difficult decisions and eventually building a life that feels like my own.
It's not perfect. There are still challenges, of course. But it's a life I've chosen and shaped for myself.
I'm happier, healthier and more grounded than I was all those years ago.
So, not everything that came out of the big C was terrible.
I wouldn't wish it on anybody. It was frightening, and there were some very difficult times. But I came through it with unexpected positives.
And most importantly, I came through it healthy.
I'm healthy. I'm strong.
And that's really why I'm sharing this story.
Because I know how easy it is to convince yourself that you're fine. To believe you're not a candidate. To notice something and decide you'll deal with it later.
I did all of those things.
I also know how frightening it can be to imagine what a screening might reveal.
But not knowing doesn't protect you.
A scan isn't a guarantee that nothing will ever happen. Nor can it prevent breast cancer. But screening can help find cancer early, often before you even know there's something wrong.
And early detection can make an enormous difference.
So please, find out where to go and book the appointment. If you've noticed a change, don't wait for your next routine scan. Have it checked.
Don't let fear make that decision for you.
You don't have to know how you'll handle bad news before you take that first step.
And if the news isn't what you hoped for, have some faith in yourself.
You can take in the information, ask the questions, consider your options and find your way forward. You don't have to do it alone, and you certainly don't have to work everything out in one day.
Whatever comes out of those tests, you can handle it.
Perhaps not in the way you imagined. Perhaps not without some very difficult days. But you'll find strength you didn't know you had.
So fasten your seatbelt, ladies.
Make the appointment.
Not later. Now.
Trust me.
I've been there.
