I got a shock. The results from the mastectomy were definitely not what I expected.

You may recall that last month I was recovering from my second mastectomy and reconstruction, purely as a precaution because they found high grade pre cancer in the breast at a biopsy in August, just before I flew to Denver and Galapagos for 5 weeks to celebrate my 50th birthday.

I was looking forward to having all the breast tissue out, and with no more breast tissue, a very low risk of having a nasty surprise with more breast cancer. It’s already nearly 5 years since the first breast cancer diagnosis in January 2020.

Except the nasty surprise came now.

Seeing my breast surgeon’s demeanour when I walked in gave me a clue. She looked sorrowful as she broke the news to me…

“We found 3 invasive cancers in your breast… each a slightly different type….” (Oh, sh*t, that means radiotherapy)

“… and a macro-metastasis of 2.2mm in your sentinel lymph node” (Ufff, that means chemo and radiotherapy)

“Cat… two of the 4 cancers are hormone receptor positive and HER2 negative” (The air goes out of me, they’ll want me to try the hormone blockers again. I had the worst 1% of side effects with Tamoxifen, and they’ll want to hit me with something stronger 😔)

I click into my usual ‘I’m calm and going to ask lots of questions’ state that I usually go to when I get bad news, and then when she steps out of the room, I dissolve into tears. Not only is this NOT the end of the journey, I know it’s now the beginning of the hardest journey I’ve had to face so far.

With the Auckland Half Marathon just raced this weekend, I have used the analogy of my one and only experience of being talked into running it: “You run all the way around the North Shore, and then you get to the highlight of the run – the Auckland Harbour Bridge – as you start running up it, you realise it’s a lot steeper than you expected, and it’s kind of challenging… then you get to run down the other side and it’s fun and easy, and you can hear and see the finish line at Victoria Park. You keep running towards Vic Park and you hear the crowds cheering as other runners cross the finish line… there is relief coursing through your body, you’re nearly there….

… and then just as you are about to get to the park, you have to turn the corner and run another 2km through the Silo Park. That last 2km is the hardest, because in your mind you were already finished, and you are sooo tired from running around the north shore and across the bridge, it takes every ounce of resilience to keep going. Luckily, I was running with a friend, and when we hit that point, I kicked into cheerleader mode: “we’ve got this, not far now, we can do it” . Quite honestly, I was doing the cheering for me more than her. If she wasn’t there, I would have stopped 🤷‍♀️

When I see the oncologist the next day, she recommends I have further surgery to remove the rest of the lymph nodes in that armpit. But I know that the operation has a high risk (30%) of permanent and often debilitating condition called lymphoedema. And it’s my dominant hand – my injecting arm. My oncologist would ideally like me to have the surgery, then chemo, followed by radiation therapy, and then (gulp) hormone blockade – which could mean multiple drugs, or could mean removing my ovaries.

I’m prepared to go on the hardest form of chemotherapy to avoid surgery and hormone blockers. And another factor I’m stuck on – I’m due to fly out to Mexico on 15 November (ironically the 3rd anniversary of my first mastectomy) for my mum’s 70th. If I do what they want me to do, there is no way I can go 😔

We’ve been planning mum’s 70th for months, my brother will be joining us in Mexico for the first time, and I had originally planned to have the mastectomy in December, after I get home… as every time I have visited mum in Mexico so far, I’ve been recovering from surgery. (Although with this news, I’m so grateful I didn’t delay the surgery to December… )

I still REALLY want to go to Mexico, and although it’s not the ideal course, I’m convincing my medical team that it’s important enough to me that we work my chemo treatments around it.

About an hour after getting home from my appointment, Mercy Breast Clinic calls. My breast surgeon would like to talk with me. “You’re a very complicated case…” she tells me – something no doctor ever wants to hear about themselves “…and Karen (my oncologist) REALLY thinks you should have the lymph node surgery, both to get any further tumours out of your body, and to help us decide what the best treatment pathway is for you”.

I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want lymphoedema. It’s my injecting arm. (It will also mean I can’t go to Mexico, although I don’t use that excuse outright). I’m finding every reason to justify not having the surgery, and I know what medical people need to hear, so I’m convincing both of us (I think). I get off the phone exhausted, and decide to go to the movies to have a mindless break from having to make decisions and be in this reality.

As I get out of the movies, I message a girlfriend who has recently just been through almost exactly the journey I’m about to embark on. “Tell it to me straight, how bad is chemo REALLY?” I ask her. It sounds pretty awful as she had all the worst side effects, but she also has great suggestions. At the end she says to me “Babe, I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if it were me, I’d have the lymph nodes removed – I had it done and it’s way easier than you think. You want to get as much cancer as you can out of your body NOW”.

Damn. She’s right. I call two of my dear doctor friends who I trust to tell it to me straight. They confirm that the surgery is more important than Mexico or my injecting arm. Chemo will destroy my ovaries anyway and throw me into menopause (which my oncologist was happy about) so what’s to lose with just trying the hormone blockers? It might be better this time?

Simone suggests I start antidepressants asap to see if they can support me through the worst of the symptoms from losing my hormones… what a great suggestion. And then, the clincher. “Babe, it’s not worth risking your health to go to Mexico, the best birthday present you can give your mum is to stay alive and be healthy in 5-10 years time – but why don’t you bring her to you instead?” Inspired! So the next morning I call my breast surgeon and say that I’ll do the surgery. I message my oncologist and say I’ll give it my best shot to do everything. And I call my mum and ask her to come as soon as she can after her birthday.

I’m booked for surgery 6 November (probably just getting out of surgery now) and will start chemo around the 28 November once mum arrives. I’ve started the antidepressants (which make me nauseous and spacey, but hey, there’s worse to come, get over it, it’s not forever). I’ll work with Erin O’Hara, our science-based Naturopath at our Takapuna clinic to help support me with symptoms of my treatments and maximise the chance of getting cancer out of my body permanently. She has already made some great suggestions about fasting on the chemo days and adjusting my supplements slightly.

We are about to start offering Vitamin C infusions at The Face Place, so I’m the perfect person to trial them and work out the appropriate timings and protocols for cancer patients. We plan to combine the Vitamin C infusions with Healite LED and a gentle head and neck massage to take the focus away from ‘another needle’ for cancer patients, so I’m excited to trial those in my ‘good weeks’ from chemo (the week after chemo is a ‘bad week’ and then you have two ‘good weeks’ before starting again).

Now I have a plan, I am so much calmer.

I’m going to continue to share my journey publicly, the good and the ugly. Just like during the Auckland Half Marathon, it helps me to cheerlead other people, and gives the journey purpose.

I am so grateful for our incredible team at The Face Place, who have done such a wonderful job of continuing to run the business so beautifully while I’ve stepped back the last couple of years. I’m also grateful for the continued support of our patients as I then don’t have to worry about the business or financials. It means I can focus fully on my journey to become healthy and cancer free.

When I finished the Auckland Half Marathon I was so proud that we had just kept running… I felt like I could have run the marathon! And because of our consistency and determination to keep going, we did a really good time (with almost no training) of 2h 10min.

So although this next 6-9 months is going to be challenging in so many ways, I’ll keep looking for the gifts from the journey. When I look back at my life, every challenging period had wonderful gifts that it gave me (if you want to see a great clip that helped me understand this, check out The Hindsight Window by Eric Edmeades)

As I said to a friend the other day, “Every challenging period has gifts, and every gift has challenging periods”.

I have a mantra I look at in the mornings which starts ‘Today is a brand new day..’ which reminds me of what’s important on a daily basis. After hearing the news about my results I got really triggered by the phrase about halfway down which states ‘healthy is happy’ – I just burst into tears as I’m not going to be fully healthy for a while. But after sitting in meditation, it came to me, and I wrote beside it with a pen “Happy is healthy”. And this is my focus as I go through my treatments. I will feel the feels and the emotions, as I don’t want to have toxic positivity or be false; and I will also look for the happy moments of joy, fun, love and gratitude to help me through the tough times and be both happy and healthy.

I’m looking forward to being on the other side of this journey, healthy, happy and cancer free. Thank you all so much for the support you may have already shown me and our team, and for your continued support of our business over the next phase of the journey….

With much love and gratitude.