When bad things happen to good people

Meet my friend Sophie.  She is amazing.  Which is probably why I am friends with her.  She dedicates her life to helping disadvantaged people.  She is someone who I can spend two hours on the phone with, thinking it was only a 10 minute chat.  She is also slightly strange in that she is very diligent with her health.  This is probably strange to me, because I am not.  So, unlike me, when she felt a small lump she did something about it.

 

Forward a couple months to me feeling like a bad friend for not being in touch for quite some time.  Letting life get in the way of a phone call, text or e-mail.  But Soph was reading my mind as she sent me a text message, which read like this: 'Hi, how’s it going?  I’ve had a bit happening recently.  I finally bought a place.  I love it.  Moved in more than a month ago but still not unpacked.  About the same time I got the keys I got diagnosed with breast cancer.  It’s early so it’s not too bad but I’m doing chemo and will have an operation then more chemo and radio therapy.  My hair started falling out on Thursday night but I already bought a wig on Tuesday which was lucky.'  

 

I did two things when I read this message.  Swore and called her straight away. 

 

How do you tell someone you have breast cancer?  This was my friend’s first challenge.  I mean it isn’t like you can say “So guess what happened to me on the weekend!”  Or, “yeah, I decided to cut my long hair into a bob because I am losing it from the chemo therapy. Oh wait, didn’t I tell you I have cancer?”  Soph had joined the other 37 women who are diagnosed with breast cancer every day in Australia alone.

 

For my friend, she got the news on what she described as the best day in her life and the worst day in her life.  She had been saving up for her first property forever, opting to live with her parents to get into the property market.  She was ecstatic when she found the perfect place within her price range. She went to pick up her keys and then went to her doctor’s appointment.  They had poked, prodded and scanned her.  As she held the keys to her new apartment in her hand, they told her she had breast cancer.  She is in her early thirties.

 

But it was okay.  She was “lucky”.  She was young and had caught it early.  So all they had to do was zap the little bugger into oblivion and then surgically remove it.  But before zapping it away, she was asked “Do you ever want to have babies?”  

 

Now my friend is in her thirties and single.  It is bad enough that society keeps reminding her that she has an imaginary clock ticking with no man by her side.  But now, with breast cancer, she had to decide whether she would ever want babies.  Would she ever want to fall pregnant?  Her decision was yes.  So she ditched her dreams of furnishing her apartment and paid for IVF.  So far she had spent her whole life trying not to get pregnant and here she was putting her eggs on ice just in case she wanted babies with a man she had not yet met.  

 

Next step: zapping.  As they zapped her hair started falling out.  But being forward thinking she had already done her research on wigging it out.  She could have human hair wigs which would set her back $10,000.  Or she could head to Paddy’s market for a $50 one.  She went somewhere in between.  Usually shopping for a wig is fun – to go with your Halloween costume.  Not so much when you are buying one as a replacement to your locks.  Another perk of cancer and chemo is that you get to go to a makeup course. Because your eyebrows and eyelashes may fall out too.  And maybe you might need a bit more cheek colour when you are a bit paler than you normally are.

 

The next thing my friend had to come to terms with was her boobs.  She had seen images of what her boob may look like post-surgery.  And they weren’t too pretty.  Now, Soph is not vain.  She is body conscious like the rest of us, but she has more important things to think about.  But what if the boobs she had always wished were a little perkier would no longer be as wonderful looking as they are now?  What would she do when she met the man of her dreams?  And got naked?  In her words, why had she worried about her body before?  It was perfect.  Being the silver-lining person she is, she let me know that breast cancer was a great excuse for a boob job.  Could you imagine people’s faces?  Thinking she is so vain about getting a boob job, and then being told she got them as a breast cancer survivor.  

 

So what more could there be to breast cancer?  How about your career?  Did I mention Soph is smart?  And amazing at what she does?  She studied, studied and studied, then worked, worked and worked to climb the ladder.  And now she is sick.  How would this affect her career?  Or the way her organisation would respond to her regularly needing a couple days off when she isn’t feeling too flash from the drugs and chemo?  How would her team go without her there every day of the working week?  What would people say when she isn’t there?  When they found out that she was sick.  And not flu sick, but sick sick.  Would she be unsupported?  Or worse, pitied?

 

In honour of Breast Cancer Awareness month, my friend Sophie has let me tell her story of the first few months of becoming a Breast Cancer patient.  While she has asked me to change her name to keep her identity confidential, the one thing she told me last week made me so proud to be her friend.  She told me she wants to be one of those people that gets Breast Cancer and then helps other people through it by giving them information on what to expect so it can be less scary for them.

 

For all those with boobs, please grope them regularly.  It is the only way to catch this nasty disease early.

 

For all those with breast cancer, you are amazing.

Monday to Friday, nice to five, Avi Vince works as a manager in a non-profit organisation. At all other times (and sometimes sneakily during nine to five) she thinks of writing. Avi Vince is starting her freelance writing career. Visit Avi's Blog at http://www.avince.com.au