I was in my hotel room getting ready to go downstairs and join a dear friend’s 40th birthday party when it started.
My hair was falling out and there was no mistaking the clumps of it in the sink. The chemo I was going through to keep me alive having had breast cancer had caught up with me, and I was pretty devastated.
Would I need to wear a wig? Will it ever grow back properly? These were just two of the questions that raced around my mind while my husband sat patiently waiting for me to emerge ready for the night ahead.
My appearance had already changed – I’d undergone a single mastectomy and despite the excellent reconstruction work and judicious wearing of different bras, I knew I looked different which somehow didn’t bother me as much. That breast had cancer in it and I was glad it was gone. I didn’t really give a stuff about whether I looked lopsided, I was alive and I was going to see my boys grow up.
I remember my first holiday abroad after treatment – I went with a group of friends and their children who’d supported me and my family over the previous year. I chose to wear a triangular pad in one side of my swimming costume in order to look “equal” and I worded my husband to keep an eye out in case it moved and I hadn’t noticed. Such tiny things became so important because it was all about trying to regain some confidence in my body which had been scarred by the surgery.
