Beating My Breast

If there are any perks from breast cancer, Changing Your Life should be one of them. Yeah, right. Nearly a year out from my diagnosis – just when everyone expects me to dust myself off and move on – I’m dull and dreary and utterly bogged. So I start a diary – hoping to sift through the quagmire in my head, and make sense of what’s been going on in my body. Maybe even to crack the code to that big one: why me? Over the next year, I pull apart my history – diet, lifestyle, mental state – looking for clues. My attempts at self-realisation get an airing, and my adolescence shaped by tragedy and change. Over time, I describe my treatments – a horror show that mutilates my boob, kills my reproductive cycles and flattens me with side effects. But surprisingly, it is my stories that carry me through. The contrast between young me and older me. My brother and nephew, long gone. My love of the outdoors. Rocks and bush. And the rocks I carry with me still.