My oldest friend has cancer.

By SHAUNA ANDERSON

In 2010 Bridget was hard at work leading a team in Senator Mark Arbib’s office. It was election time and she was working 6 days a week. Bridget was beyond busy in her job.

“The kind of days when you’re on the phone as you’re getting out of bed and putting your make up on in the morning, and if you could continue the call in the shower, you would. But I liked what I was doing and believed in it so it was ok. I was young. It wasn’t always going to be like this. There’d be time to relax and get a normal life later. “

So, as she says, it was a rare day off that took her to the GP with some random symptoms

We’ve all been there; so busy with a career, study, our kids, so busy that it’s just damn hard to get to the docs. But she knew something didn’t feel quite right, quite normal.

“For a while I’d been getting these pains in my belly. Not all the time but every so often. I couldn’t see a pattern.”

Little did she know she’d be soon having an ultrasound and then soon referred to another doctor.

The seriousness of what was going on didn’t sink in. She didn’t have time to think about it, until she finally went to the specialist .

“As I’m walking along the corridor I finally see the name plate for his office. And underneath his name are these words: Gynecological Oncologist. “

There was surgery, there was hospital. There were, as she says, many many tears.

“Out I go. Clearly I’m dazed. I remember getting in the car and bursting into tears.“

She says she somehow got home, and called her family.

“How horrible it must have been for them. You’re chopping carrots to make dinner and your sister calls in tears.”

Bridget was like my sister growing up. Her family and mine were inseparable. We holidayed together. We spent Christmas and Easter together. We were related, maybe not by blood but by Irish music and laughter.

Every single significant thing I did as a kid Bridget was there. For Bridget not to be “there” is unfathomable.

To me she will always be the lanky kid with dirty blonde hair and a fondness for Hello Kitty. But in her professional life Bridget is a well respected much in demand political advisor. Her career is long and successful. And she comes from an equally successful political family.

She says telling other people was the worst part “especially because before the surgery you don’t know for sure what it is – so you’re just talking about growths on your ovary, which is not what you usually talk to other people about. So that was weird.”

“I told my boss straight away because I knew I had to leave, in the middle of an election and wasn’t sure what would happen after. I could barely talk through the crying. Poor guy.  But he was terrific. And even better after, when I came back to work. “

Then she had to tell her staff.

“Again, I could barely get the words out. Each time I had to tell people it was making it more real, I guess. Everyone was really good about it, saying all the right things. Only one person was weird – like I’d told him I was seeing a movie after work; nothing special.”

Bridget had ovarian cancer. She was only 36 years old.

Here are the facts:

• Ovarian cancer is notoriously hard to diagnose. All Bridget had was some strange stomach pains.
• If diagnosed and treated early, which most are not, the cure rate is 90 per cent.
• In about 75 per cent of cases, the cancer will be at an advanced stage when it’s diagnosed.
• Each year about 1400 Australian women are diagnosed with it.
• 10 to 15% of ovarian cancer is inherited.
• 43 out of 100 women survive five years after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

And here are the facts that I didn’t want to write:

• In Australia one woman dies every 10 hours from ovarian cancer.
• That’s over 700 women a year.

From stomach pains, to surgery to chemo it was a roller coaster ride.

She says at the time she knew nothing about ovarian cancer,

“I do now. I know quite a bit about it now, but at this stage I still hadn’t made the connection.”

“The connection” she is referring to is the fact that it runs in her family.

The family put together the pieces and suspected that they might carry the BRCA gene. The “Angelina Jolie” gene.

“Being so young, getting ovarian cancer I was fairly certain that I did have the mutation, but then the implications were that other people in the family might have it.”

Bridget’s cancer journey has been one she describes as “shit”!

I remember her telling me at the time that she wouldn’t wish chemo on her worst enemy.

Yet she continued to work through the treatment. The Gillard government had had a drawn out and narrow victory and Mark Arbib had Bridget hard at work as Chief of Staff. She wanted to keep working, to keep things as normal as they could be.

“I would go to Canberra a couple of days a week but I would have to be back in Sydney on Wednesdays for chemo.”

Six months part time at work, then six months full time.

One thing people have always said about Bridget is that she is logical, practical, pragmatic. She says that during this year of working she did a lot of research.

“My policy of research is that I will only read peer-reviewed scientific journals and stuff published by government. I won’t read random crap on the internet.

I knew it would stuff with my head and I knew once those thoughts are in your head you can’t get them out.”

In typical Bridget style she came to a conclusion.

“I quit”.

She says she knew that her ovarian cancer comes back within 80% of cases and usually within two years.

“80%! If someone offered me 80% at the casino I would absolutely invest. It’s not to be ignored. “

She decided to take a year off and make the most of it. She travelled, she saw friends and family, she jogged!

We travelled to Port Douglas together at this time, and I came across her, her brother and his wife and their kids, her sister, and her kids all doing boot camp together! Running, jogging, sweating, laughing. She was fit and healthy and enjoying life.

And then a year after she quit, it was back.

“Cancer the second time is boring” she says.

Radiation therapy, chemo again.

“People say I sound positive, but I think people think they would be a mess if this happened to them, but you are not a mess, because what’s the point? You can’t function as a mess, at some point you just say so this is what it is.”

Bridget says she is disappointed, not angry. The rest of us, I think, are angry for her. But she says that she just thought she’d have more time before the whole treadmill of treatment started again.

And what she says is tough is that the second time round people find it harder to talk about.

“I do look and I wonder if people know what this means?”

What Bridget wants is for people to talk about ovarian cancer. For women to know their bodies, and not to ignore symptoms because they are busy.

“Go to the GP if you think something’s not right. Maybe you’ve got a food allergy, maybe they’ll say there’s nothing wrong, who knows. But the worst thing that will happen is you’ve wasted 30 minutes of your day.”

Bridget and I talk about hope.  Hope for her, hope in the minds of her family and friends. She wants them to both understand what the future means, and yet also feels that maybe it’s better that they don’t.

“Despite what I know I am still hopeful. I am not hopeful of a cure, I don’t know what I am hopeful for, but I am hopeful, which is weird and unjustified and odd but never the less there is hope. “

When I mentioned to Bridget that I wanted to write this, to raise awareness for “Frocktober” * she sent me something she’d written. She wrote it just for herself long before the idea of this article was raised. She showed it to me, I guess because we are who we are and we’ve known each other for such a god damned long time and she knows that I love her. She says its private, but that she is willing to share some parts, and because Bridget is Bridget it is down to earth, and honest-as- can-be. And so in her words…

“I hear people bitching about traffic or late deliveries and have no tolerance for it. And then, in a heartbeat, I thank God on their behalf that they don’t know any better. That that’s the thing they have to complain about.

I’m pretty certain I’m going to die from this. Not now. Not this year. But sometime.

And knowing that does bring a clarity to what’s important in my life. But this is a ‘gift’ I’d gladly exchange and I hate being a cliché but I am. Here’s what’s important: my family, my friends, and what I want, what I believe in.

Perhaps that’s the lesson from this: figure out what’s important and don’t sweat the small stuff.

But then, maybe the lesson is there isn’t always a lesson. Maybe there’s no sense to any if this. It’s just happening and I’m doing the best I can to live my life knowing what I know. “

 * Frocktobver is a fundraiser for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation,with unlimited ways to frock up and raise funds. Find out more here.