The Lucky One

by Krystal Barter

  Even now, when Bonnie is not quite four years old, I look at her and think: Will Bonnie walk the same path as me? Will her journey be the same or is it just possible she’s escaped the curse? Chris reckons it doesn’t matter because she’ll have us to support her and my experiences to reflect on. In fact, she may even read this book one day and, who knows, it might just help. (Although, she should feel free to skip the first few chapters describing my teenage years. Say, the first twenty-odd years of my life, perhaps Bonnie?) I created Pink Hope especially for Bonnie, and for all the other little girls out there just like her who will grow up in the shadow of hereditary cancer. Hopefully, Pink Hope will mean Bonnie’s journey will be a less lonely, less isolating experience. And when she’s ready to start asking questions, the Pink Hope community will be there to answer them.

  When I look into Bonnie’s face, I don’t see any gene fault; I don’t see a DNA code. I see my funny, charming, spontaneous daughter and I could never imagine any other. Chris and I still have a frozen embryo in storage that’s guaranteed BRCA1 negative, but we’re reluctant to ever use it. Going through PGD and IVF, even once, was enough to make us realise how lucky we are to even have a child and we will never, ever take that for granted. And in just the same way that having such a strong bond with my mum means that I would go through breast surgery twenty times over in order to have been born her daughter, I only hope that one day Bonnie feels the same about me. Regardless of the genetic inheritance I gift her.

  And, who knows? Maybe Bonnie won’t carry our gene fault. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? But right now Bonnie is busy being a beautiful little girl without a care in the world and that’s exactly the way it should be. Perhaps, in the future, there will be medical advancements enough to change Bonnie’s fortunes? Or perhaps she will follow in my (tentatively trailblazing) footsteps? Either way, Bonnie will continue what I’ve begun in breaking our family’s cycle of cancer.

  CHAPTER 20

  Where I do hope Bonnie’s story differs from mine, if not with breast cancer, is with breasts. With any luck Bonnie will avoid having to undergo a preventative mastectomy like I did. This might be through genetic good fortune; it might be through advancements in medical alternatives. But whatever the path her life takes I can only wish, in the eventuality she does require breast implants, that Bonnie’s are better than mine.

  This was no reflection on Dr Megan Hassall, mind you. Megan did an amazing job with my initial request and with the technology available at the time. Still, having had dramas with my drains, not to mention being so disappointed with my eventual implants, the final hiccup came, about a year after my last breast surgery, when one of my implants rotated, flipped and moved. In my sleep. Picture this: You go to bed with a pair of normal, matching, apparently happy boobs and you wake up with … one?

  ‘Oh my god, Chris! Where’s my breast gone?’ I rifled through our bedsheets frantically as if the runaway boob might be asleep in there with the covers pulled up over its head, while the rest of my body had woken up for the day.

  ‘Wha—your breast? Gone?’ Chris was yanked awake in the cruellest of ways. (Well, second cruellest. Waking up to find you are missing a body part probably shades it.)

  ‘Yes!’ I screeched. ‘My breast, my left breast. It’s missing!’

  And it was. Where yesterday an implant had sat fair and square on the left side of my chest, now there was nothing. Just loose skin. After a brief panicked search, I located my boob camped out upstate, underneath my armpit. It seems my implant had rotated and flipped during the night, popping out of its socket and leaving me flat on one side.

  ‘Does it hurt? Are you in pain?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted, grudgingly, once I’d calmed down a little (and woken up some more). ‘But how the hell did this happen?’ I was unimpressed to say the least.

  As it turned out, ‘this’ happened when your implants were inserted in an era before traction technology. Nowadays, anyone with lovely, perky silicone sacs can be assured that their breast implants will remain just that: breast implants. (As opposed to the armpit variety I was now sporting.) This is because new, textured breast implants are now available that are rough to touch on the outer surface of the implant, practically like sandpaper, and that therefore grip onto your breast cavity. My implants, however, were inserted before adhesive implants were commonplace which meant that during my (apparently energetic) sleep I’d somehow managed to dislodge one from my chest and I now had a boob tucked under my arm.

  And, sure, I can see the comedic value now. But let me tell you, I wasn’t laughing back then because it was a week before I could have surgery to have it corrected. A week. Which is a long time for anyone to be walking around with a C-cup wobbling about in your armpit. The phrase ‘tuck-shop-lady-arms’ took on a whole new meaning and shaving my armpits was a veritable obstacle course by the time I’d dodged the silicone. After everything that I’d been through with my mastectomy and my drains and my expanders and my reconstruction, surely this had to be the least sexy of them all?

  And so one long week after my left breast left home, I was admitted to North Shore Private Hospital to have both of my breast implants replaced. At the time Bonnie was only seven months old but, as I was unable to breastfeed her as a result of my mastectomy, there was nothing preventing me from having the surgery straight away. And the results were amazing.

  My new breasts were ‘unveiled’ while I was still in hospital. The only people present were Dr Megan Hassall (my ever-faithful plastic surgeon) and my mum and, consequently, the whole affair had the feel of some secret-women’s-business ceremony. As I stood nervously next to my starched hospital bed, Megan gently and tenderly unwrapped the bandages from my chest while Mum looked on, holding her breath.

  ‘Wow!’ Mum exclaimed once I was exposed. ‘They look fantastic!’

  In my family we refer to breasts as a life-force of their own. It’s never ‘You look fantastic’ or ‘I feel fantastic’, but rather ‘they’, the breasts, as if they are independent from the rest of you. I guess there’s a natural distancing that comes with such traitors as our breasts tend to be. But fantastic? Was she sure? While I could generally rely on Mum to be brutally honest (prior to my corrective surgery, Mum described my mismatched breasts thus: ‘They used to look like two bright shining headlights but now one has its blinker on and is turning left up and into your armpit …’), I wasn’t so confident now. More than anyone, Mum could see how fragile I was at that moment and I knew she’d be quick to compliment. Instead, I turned to Megan for an honest appraisal.

  ‘Bloody fantastic,’ Megan confirmed.

  And while this was not quite the clinical assessment I was expecting, it was more than fine with me.

  ‘Really?’ I asked dubiously, as I moved towards the mirror.

  ‘Really!’ they chorused, and I had to admit they were right. Staring back at me from my semi-naked, reflected image were two perfectly formed, high-set, infinitely feminine D-cups. My D-cups. I was thrilled. I fell in love with them the instant I saw them. It was as if they were the breasts I was meant to be born with. After months of surgeries and injections and pain, after years of fear and anxiety and rage, I had at last reached a place I wasn’t sure I ever would again: I felt beautiful.

  CHAPTER 21

  In the eighteen months following my corrective breast surgery, my breasts stayed (mercifully) put. No leaving home; no life on the road; no popping out for some milk and bread never to return again. They were well-behaved and all-accounted for, their wandering spirit having been well and truly quashed. In fact, the only one adding any stamps to their passport at this time (and for practically the first time ever, I might add) was me.

  I never intended to go on a wildly ambitious and terribly glamorous tour of the United States, let me make that clear from the outset. I’m a homebody and quite happy to be. I had never travelled much before—never been further than across the ditch to visit my extended family in New Zealand—and what’s more I’d never
had any real desire to do so. Apart from our (aborted) holiday to Phuket, I’d never wanted to go anywhere much. Consequently, when one of Pink Hope’s most generous sponsors, and a major international cosmetics company, suggested I jet off State-side as an international envoy to create a USA–Aussie global alliance for high-risk women, well, I was more astonished than anyone else. It went a little something like this:

  Me: Milk? Sugar?

  Janet from a major international cosmetics company: White with one, thanks.

  Me: And is skimmed milk okay?

  Janet: Lovely, thanks. Krystal, how would you feel about flying to the USA as an international envoy to create a US–Aussie support network for high-risk women?

  Me: Astonished; that’s how I’d feel. [Pause] You said ‘yes’ to sugar, didn’t you?

  I didn’t for one second think Janet was serious. I mean, who pops in for a coffee and to discuss the sponsorship details of Bright Pink Lipstick Day and then casually pulls out a free ticket to the States from behind their ear? It was too much. No one organisation could be that generous and no one woman that supportive. But Janet was, and so before I knew it I was renewing my passport and labelling luggage tags and preparing to fly out to America.

  The trip was to be something of a cultural exchange. Dubbed the ‘Tour of Hope’, I would kick things off with four days in New York where I would meet my American sister and all-round hero, Lindsay Avner, founder of Pink Hope’s USA counterpart, Bright Pink. Together, Lindsay and I would attend fundraising events, meet with sponsors, do the rounds of publicity and, finally, attend New York Fashion Week with Bright Pink’s sponsor, TRESemmé. Then, it was off to Chicago and to Bright Pink’s HQ where Lindsay and I would talk strategy, pool resources and just generally combine forces to create a more united front in the fight against breast and ovarian cancer. I could not wait. Only, there was one small hitch: my pathological fear of flying.

  Telling me to cross the Pacific in a plane was like instructing me to fly to the moon. Flapping my own arms. Sure, I may have volunteered to have my own breasts removed and I may have undergone multiple reconstruction surgeries; I might have given birth three times and, yeah, there was the time I had my knee reconstructed, too. But step foot on a modern aircraft? Are you kidding? It was near-impossible for me to consider and even more implausible for me to go ahead and do. Even after my ticket had been purchased, my itinerary finalised and my bags packed, I still wasn’t sure I had the guts to see this thing through. Could I really swallow my fear (along with some heavy-duty sleeping tablets) and get onboard? It would be terrible to disappoint Janet, and worse to disappoint Lindsay (who was so super-excited you’d think it was Hanukah and New Year’s Eve and her birthday all rolled into one). But I would rather be a disappointment than an episode of Air Crash Investigation. And so, despite what I was telling everyone around me, my mind wasn’t made-up at all.

  And I might still be dithering over the decision even now, if it wasn’t for Pink Hopers, Sophie and Amy. Like me, Sophie is a previvor who had surgery after learning she was BRCA positive. Amy, on the other hand, has terminal cancer. The three of us were chatting over lunch one day, in the nervous lead-up to my flight, when Sophie casually leaned back in her chair and asked me if I’d packed my cancer card.

  ‘My cancer—wha?’

  ‘Your cancer card. I never leave home without it,’ she said. ‘You should definitely try it,’ she suggested to Amy.

  Amy had no idea what she was talking about and said so.

  ‘You’re joking!’ Now it was Sophie’s turn to be dumbstruck. ‘You’ve never flashed your cancer card?’

  And with that, Sophie came over all misty-eyed as she animatedly explained the ‘cancer card’ system to Amy and me, talking with the passion of an evangelical.

  The ‘cancer card’ was a pass to better service. Whether an aisle seat on a plane or a discount on a bill, an upgrade in a restaurant or a leg-up in a queue, Sophie simply mentioned the fact she was receiving pro-active treatment for breast cancer, smiled nicely and waited for the sweeteners to roll in.

  ‘I like to think of it as the universe spoiling me in some way,’ she explained prosaically and I couldn’t stop laughing.

  ‘You really do this? You really tell people about your cancer gene in order to get a golden ticket?’

  She shrugged, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  ‘You know what? That’s so awesome!’ Amy agreed.

  And it was. Because I’d seen the god-awful things Amy and others had been through with cancer and she bloody deserved any good things she could come by. But that wasn’t what impressed me most. What impressed me was Sophie’s amazing attitude. Because it wasn’t like she was saying: ‘My life sucks and the cosmos owes me something because I’ve got a cancer gene.’ Rather, she was on the lookout for fun and harmless ways to make her everyday life more bearable despite the hardships she faced. The things she scammed didn’t hurt anyone, they didn’t cost anyone (other than those corporations that could afford it), and they showed what an all-round positive outlook she had on life. And it was this outlook that made me realise I could get on a plane. I mean, if Sophie could stare down cancer with such good humour and positivity, then surely I could find it within myself to accept a free ticket to the USA? I just had to pull myself together, pull on my flight socks (no point dying of deep-vein thrombosis, right?) and get onboard that plane.

  In the end, that’s exactly what I did. On 1 September 2012, I boarded a flight bound for LAX. I didn’t use the cancer card, mind you. I couldn’t have brought myself to do that when there were women out there like Amy who deserved it so much more than me. And, anyway, I didn’t need to; not when Janet and her people were taking such good care of me. I did, however, think of Sophie as I gritted my teeth and made my way tentatively along the boarding bridge towards the plane, my hand running along the side wall of the tunnel all the way. I wanted to stay connected terra firma until the last possible second. Moments earlier, as I’d hugged Chris and the kids and Mum and Dad goodbye, Mum had bawled at the sight of her baby girl jetting off overseas on her own for the first time. (Sure, her baby girl may have been 29 years old but you trying telling that to Mum and her clutch of tissues.)

  And so I boarded a fourteen-hour flight to Los Angeles, followed by a transfer to the domestic terminal, and then a six-hour flight to New York. For a normal human being this would be a chore but for someone with as limited travel experience as I had, I may as well have been scaling Everest. Just negotiating my way to the domestic terminal from LAX was life-changing in itself. But what an exhilarating experience! It feels silly to admit it, but getting myself from Sydney to New York on my own, and in one piece, is one of the greatest achievements of my adult life. Conquering my fear, and going it alone without my family around me for the first time ever, was a very big deal to me at the time.

  And do you know what I discovered? I discovered that I wasn’t really afraid of flying at all. In fact, I quite liked it. I could stretch out and watch a movie and have someone offer me snacks (instead of the other way around), all of which are novel when you’re a mum to three young children. No; I realised I wasn’t really afraid of flying, I had just never entertained the possibility before. That might sound strange in a culture like ours, where anyone over the age of eighteen, and therefore legally able to hold a passport and to drink, celebrates this happy coincidence by booking themselves on a Contiki tour of some far-off destination. But I had never thought I could go travelling. I had never thought I could do a great many things in life, apart from one day, inevitably, get cancer. In fact, I had always avoided thinking about the future because I never seriously thought that I had one.

  But now that I had braved a double mastectomy and been given my breast-cancer-get-out-of-jail-free-card, I was just beginning to see the possibilities in life. Suddenly, I had a great many opportunities ahead of me and travel, apparently, was one of them.

  As we began our descent into the city that ne
ver sleeps, at just a little before midnight local time, I was overwhelmed with emotion and with the sight of more brilliant, twinkling lights than I had ever seen in my life. I did it! I actually did it! I thought. By the time I had stepped off that plane and negotiated customs and found myself alone and alive in New York City, I felt as if I could do anything. Cancer be damned, I was taking my life back, one bite of the Big Apple at a time.

  The next two weeks were a blur of supersized American amazingness. That, and a lot of pink. Meeting Lindsay was by far the highlight of my trip and we hit it off in person even more than we did online. ‘Oh, say that again! You Aussie’s are so cute!’ was her constant refrain and she seemed just as enthralled with my Northern Beaches twang as I was with her Chicago drawl. ‘You’re my little Aussie sister!’ she’d say, giving ‘Aussie’ that soft ‘s’ sound that only Americans do. But it wasn’t all fun and names; Lindsay and I had some serious schmoozing to do.

  We visited the cosmetic company’s Park Avenue headquarters, where I proudly showed off the photos of Pink Hope’s recent Bright Pink Lipstick Day. We met with the editors of US Weekly magazine and Women’s Health magazine, to discuss the issue of hereditary cancer and to talk all things pink. And we spent time with Bright Pink’s sponsor, TRESemmé, planning for the year ahead. It was a whirlwind of a trip, highlighted by the fact that I only spied Times Square, home of my beloved Broadway, from behind the dirty glass window of a yellow New York cab as Lindsay and I careened past on our way to our next appointment. We did, however, find time in our busy schedule to pop into New York Fashion Week to see UK fashion designer Jenny Packham’s show.