My breast cancer story began almost exactly three years ago during – irony of ironies – Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I had come down with what turned out to be a bout of whooping cough. "How Victorian," I mumbled to my doctor, wondering whether I was likely to contract consumption next. More likely connected to an epidemic sparked by ill-advised parents refusing to immunise their children, she told me.
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As I spluttered my way to recovery I absentmindedly rubbed my chest, and that's when I noticed the lump. The size of a small marble, it felt solid and ominous. It was also puzzling. I'd never even checked my breasts before, having no family history of either lumps or breast cancer. I didn't smoke, drank only red wine and considered myself one of the fitter people I knew.
Yet before you could say "double mastectomy" I was undergoing my first ever mammogram followed by a needle biopsy, which turned up nothing to warrant concern. The surgeon told me lumps presenting like this were generally not anything to worry about; in fact, she said, she had not seen a problematic one all year. Even so, she would remove it and check it.
A week later I went in to get my biopsy results, at which point my surgeon told me I'd been "the surprise of the day". In one sense she'd been right; it seemed the lump I'd identified did not appear problematic. But right beside it she had found a rather nasty, malignant tumour.
Yes, I had cancer.
The floor fell away. Through the shock I registered that my surgeon was talking slowly and very carefully. I would need treatment, she explained, but first we had to answer a question: Had the cancer already spread? I sat in the hospital cafe, eating jelly snakes and shaking.
That night, in one of the most vivid dreams I have ever experienced, I stood alone on a desolate, dark alien world. Whenever I tried to take a step, the rocks beneath my feet threatened to liquify. All I could do was remain frozen, look out at the stars and think: Why?
Back in the real world, I found myself again on a gurney awaiting exploratory lymph node surgery. When breast cancer cells travel, this is the route they like to take. This time the biopsy would take place while I was unconscious. Get the all clear and I'd be home that afternoon. But if my lymph nodes proved cancerous, I'd go straight back under the knife.
Prior to my first operation I'd heard soothing classical music piping into the operating theatre. This time the team had chosen disco, starting with the Bee Gees and Staying Alive. Then everything went black.
I woke up in transit to the recovery room, not the ward. Good news, I realised. My lymph nodes were clear. I now faced two options: to walk away and cross my fingers that the cancer would never return, or to play the numbers game and dive into blunt force treatments that slashed the chance of recurrence.
It didn't even feel like a choice, so with the violence of a door slamming shut, my life changed completely. I went straight into chemotherapy (four "cycles", each of which took three weeks), to be followed immediately by radiotherapy (30 sessions on consecutive days), after which I would have five years of hormone treatment.
Many people sail through all this. I did not. Kylie Minogue likened the chemotherapy she underwent for her breast cancer to an atomic explosion, and that is how it felt to me. Four times I visited the chemo unit to have drugs pumped into my bloodstream. Each session left me fighting nausea, light-headedness, anxiety and dread. Time seemed to stand still; my energy deteriorated. I tried to walk for an hour each day to combat the side effects and counted backwards, like a jailbird looking forward to the moment I would be free.
An unexpected aspect was "chemo brain". Many avoid this completely, but I had it bad – a mind fog that brought the advantage of making the days slide into each other but left me barely able to concentrate enough to read. At times I thought I'd never be able to lucidly string two words together again – a terrifying prospect for a writer.
When I was diagnosed with cancer I was part-way through researching a biography of Australian architect Harry Seidler; one of those towering projects in every way. As the treatments kicked in, I found myself having to stop work completely. Would I ever be able to finish it? I didn't know.
My partner was fantastic; he was with me every step of the way. Friends surprised me with wonderful gifts, bringing food, mailing presents and keeping in touch. One even came over every single Sunday and drove me to the ocean for a swim, come hail, rain or shine. For this I can never thank her enough.
Before my hair fell out I visited the hospital's "wig library" and chose a new 'do – a fringed pageboy bob that I got rather attached to – but one of the worst moments came with the realisation that not only was I entirely bald, but that my eyelashes were falling out as well.
Family flooded in: my sister and nephews from France and, in my last week of radiotherapy, my brother from the UK. He and my partner came with me for my final bout of radiotherapy and saw me ring the special bell set up in the waiting room – a noise heralding the moment a patient's treatment is finally over.
Today I am well, and back on track. A Singular Vision: Harry Seidler appears next month; a second book is also complete. Projects done and hair regrown, it feels as though I can really start to breathe again. Life is good. Yet scars remain. Every year Breast Cancer Awareness Month rolls around and it remains bittersweet for me.
This is the month my nightmare started – it's a surreal enough landscape without water bottles with pink lids, but the reminders are important. One in eight women in this country will be diagnosed with breast cancer by the time they are 85 and early detection is critical. Too few of us self-examine, or make use of free mammograms, and this has got to change.
Cancer can be a lonely disease, yet we are surrounded by support if we look for it. It is frightening and sometimes difficult but, in truth, we are never alone.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in women. Contact Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) for a free "My Journey Kit" for newly diagnosed women:1800 500 258 or bcna.org.au.
