Survivor Status: Ongoing

It has taken a long while, but I am finally here...

Hello! My name is Christina and I'm new around here (as are you). Welcome, and thank-you for being here, no matter how or why you found your way to this page. It seems fitting that it is the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness Month in Australia.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, at only 29 years of age (which is very young, considering the average age of breast cancer diagnosis in Australia is 60 years). The chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer in that year, and at that age, was 0.003%.

My breast cancer was an aggressive, hormone positive tumour in my left breast; I found it one day thanks in part to my over cautious personality as well as Australian icon Olivia Newton-John, because she had been spruiking her gel-filled, breast cancer detection pads on morning television. (I had thought of buying some, but never did and then didn't need to.) Never has something the size of two peas (14 mm) caused me so much grief.

If you have also had breast cancer (or know someone who has, and that is pretty much everyone) then you'll know what came next for me; a gamut of tests and biopsies, a flurry of appointments with a surgeon, oncologist and fertility specialist, a hastily scheduled lumpectomy (excision of the lump via surgery), ovarian suppression (Zoladex), chemotherapy (6 months), radiotherapy (6 weeks), adjuvant hormone therapy in the form of Herceptin (12 months) and Tamoxifen (5 years).

I didn't know what had befallen me and why.

I was 29 years old and knew nothing much at all of the medical merry-go-round (or un-merry-go-round as the case may be).

I was meant to be starting a family, not trying to survive breast cancer.

***

I was diagnosed with breast cancer on March 30th 2005, whereon the crappiest months of my life began. Being diagnosed with cancer at 29 and being told you can't have kids for five years, and perhaps never, will certainly create some issues for you.

These were the words I wrote in my first pen-and-paper diary entry almost twelve months after my diagnosis. It was momentous because I'd been a prolific diary writer since the age of eleven, when my aunt and uncle gave me a diary with small pink and blue flowers on the cover for Christmas in 1986. It quickly became my most treasured possession. Something I didn't know how much I needed until I had it in my hands.

With a page for each day of the year, I recorded my Grade 6 musings almost daily in 1987 (not much went on, I must say, as many lines went unwritten). I loved writing with my scented pens because the ink was laced with a fruity fragrance to match (the pink strawberry pen was my favourite, followed by the blueberry one).

My diary writing continued in carefully selected journals throughout my years of secondary school, university, my first teaching job, marriage and my overseas travels.

However, like so many things in my life after my diagnosis, my written diary entries stopped.

I didn't have the words to describe my diagnosis and what was happening to me. I was overrun with medical appointments and treatments and by the end of the day, I was depleted of any emotional reserve to record my daily thoughts and experiences.

A few months into my diagnosis, I started tapping away (pounding?) the computer keys to record my thoughts in a digital format. I wrote 12 000 words trying to process my diagnosis and the tumultuous months of treatment, printed it and shared my musings with my husband, parents and sisters. It remains a very raw and intimate document of thoughts.

I was a changed person when I picked up my blue pen again early in 2006, around the time of my 30th birthday. Breast cancer had changed everything; my perspective, my outlook, my hopes, my ability to dream and my voice. But I wrote and I read, I cried and lamented, I rejoiced (sometimes) and put one foot in front of the other (most days) to ever so slowly find my way in life again post diagnosis.

It has taken years. More than a decade in fact.

Through my diary writing, I've learned quite a few things about breast cancer, survival, resilience, courage, grief, loss, life, childlessness and chronic illness (to name the most pertinent).

Only now have I felt courageous enough to share my story.

I'd love to know more about your story if you'd like to share; your diagnosis, how you identify with the word 'survivor' (or not) and whether you are also looking for the courage to share your story - or how you've already found it.

Survivor Status: Ongoing,

Christina