In the beginning

I remember watching Prince Phillip’s funeral on 17 April and discussing with Bill whether it was odd to choreograph your own farewell service. As a control freak I would take some comfort from knowing my favourite songs would be played, my photo on the order of service would be flattering and the speakers would be of a quality I deemed acceptable. Bill thought it was weird especially the Land Rover hearse. What made this conversation all the more surreal was I’d found a lump in my left breast on 13 April and it was probably cancer.

On the evening of 13 April I leaned forward to whip off my bra before jumping into bed when my hand brushed against something that shouldn’t have been there. I straightened up to conduct a further investigation but I couldn’t find it. I leaned forward and there it was again.

Only a week beforehand the fabulous Kiritapu Allan had publicly announced that she was stepping down from her Ministerial portfolios to take medical leave as she battled cervical cancer. In an emotional FaceBook post on 6 April she encouraged women to put themselves and their health first - so I made a mental note to get onto that lump the following morning.

When I arrived at work the next day I called the Mercy Breast Clinic. They told me to call my GP, as a referral from her would get me an urgent appointment. Wiki, my GP, had just had a cancellation so I hopped in the car and drove all the way back from whence I’d come. She reassured me and made the referral.

Back in the office, I called the Mercy Breast Clinic again - this time to make an urgent appointment. The receptionist could not quite believe how quickly I’d managed to get the referral but I was in luck, there was space the very next day.

I confess that I was bullish when I arrived at the breast clinic on 15 April. I’d had a clear mammogram in November and I was pretty confident I’d be given a clean bill of health and be sent on my way. I stripped to the waist and donned my attractive gown with the waist ties and sat with similarly dressed women in the separate wee gowned waiting room.

In the ultra sound room I started to get worried because Jeremy, the radiographer, was worried. He explained he was concerned about the lump and also my sentinel lymph node. They looked like breast cancer. He wanted to biopsy both of them but before he did so he left to speak to the surgeon. When Jeremy returned he explained he wanted me to be examined by the surgeon before he took the biopsies. Back to the gowned waiting room I went.

I was then collected by Steve and taken into his consulting room. I was being seen by him because Jeremy, a very experienced radiographer who is Clinical Head of Breast Imaging at Auckland Hospital and a consultant at Greenlane Clinical Centre, thought it was cancer. He explained what breast cancer was, the likely surgery and the likely subsequent treatment. At the end of the consultation he asked if I was OK. I said “Not really’. He hugged me.

Back to the ultra sound room for the biopsies. One in the lump, the other in the lymph node. I found watching the needle going in on the ultra sound image strangely fascinating. (I toyed with being a doctor right up until the end of my first year at University, but blood makes me skweemish and as much as I loved biology and chemistry, I loved english and history more). When doing the biopsies Jeremy put a wee titanium marker in the spot where the biopsy was taken from. They show up in imaging to guide the doctors to the right spot. The holes in my armpit and breast were dressed and back I went to the gowned waiting room.

Next a mammogram. They are only slightly more pleasant than a smear test. There is nothing quite like having your boob sandwiched in a vice and then photographed.

I was then ushered into a room to compare my November mammogram with the new one. They looked exactly the same except the subsequent image had the titanium marker. You could not see a lump. I didn’t know it then but I was about to become another statistic. I was the 1 in 10 women whose dense breast tissue means their cancer doesn’t show up on a mammogram.

I had been at the breast clinic for nearly 3 hours. I had missed the lunch at work I was supposed to be chairing. I was told my biopsy results were unlikely to be back before the weekend. I called my husband from the car and told him I probably had breast cancer. I returned to work, ate leftovers from the lunch I had missed and told my colleagues the same news.

I was strangely calm.

My results were not back before the weekend and Prince Phillip’s funeral.

I thought the service was beautiful. Seeing the queen sitting alone with her head bowed was incredibly moving. I loved the lone bagpiper, the Last Post and Action Stations. I would like to plan my own funeral too - but not for at least another 30 years.