My breast had never seen as much action as it got over the next few weeks. I got used to flopping it out on slabs while it was squashed and photographed and scanned and poked and prodded and drawn on and had needles stuck in so the guy who did my lumpectomy would know where to cut.

“It’s OK,” the oncologist said. “We’ve caught it early. I’m fairly confident I can remove it all doing a lumpectomy.”

After the operation his face told a different story. He didn’t get clear margins. He’d need to go in again. I signed the form that gave him permission to do a full mastectomy if needed, while inwardly I made deals with a God I had no faith in for this not to be the case.

Afterward, good news, this time. Better. No mastectomy required, just tissue removal. The margins were clear. He’d got it all. My lymph nodes came back clear; it hadn’t spread.

I had chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The skin on my breast turned red like sunburn and blistered. It hurt. It hurt like hell. My hair fell out. I moved back in with my parents, gained twenty kilos, and looked like a bloated caricature of myself. The nausea was ever present and I threw up until my teeth started to rot. The worst thing was, when I looked in the mirror I saw cancer, not me.

“But you’re too young,” people would say, puzzled. “Isn’t that an older woman’s disease?”

Cancer is an indiscriminate bastard.

I started on a course of Tamoxifen, a drug that decreased my chances of developing secondary cancer. It wasn’t easy; the drug made me develop early menopausal symptoms and the hot flashes were horrendous. But every time I took another pill I told myself I was doing this so that I could live. Everything was going to be OK.

Until it wasn’t.

Notes from Ava

(Women’s Weekly, September 25)

YOU are the best advocate you could ever possibly have when it comes to your own health.

That doctor, sitting in the chair opposite you, they’re human too. And as well-meaning as they generally are, they’re often harried; overwhelmed by an overburdened health system and its demands on their time. Medicine is a business just like any other, with a bottom line and goals and targets that must be reached. That doctor in front of you might have had a rough night, little sleep, caring for a newborn at home or an elderly dementia parent, recently moved into the annex. They might be distracted, worrying about when they’re going to have time to type up the last three patients’ notes, and yours, before it all becomes a domino effect and the rest of the day goes down the gurgler. They might be thinking about what they’ll have for dinner, or wondering why Brenda the receptionist gave the other staff members Christmas cards but not them. Have they done something to upset her?

Fifteen minutes, tops. That’s all the time you have to convince the doctor sitting in front of you that something is potentially wrong. You know this, because you know your own body, certainly far better than they, who have only just now made its acquaintance, do.