Take 5 – Barb on Breast Cancer and Boobs!

Barb is on of those women who everyone adores. Intelligent, caring and shit loads of fun she is the sort of person you want to be around! So last year we were all in shock when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I can remember training Barb in the gym close to her operation, she was chest pressing with tears streaming down her eyes…she didn’t want to talk about it, she wanted to train and cry…cry and train…sort it out in her head so she could best work out how she was going to get through this.  I remember thinking that day…this is one strong woman… I know everyone in her FIRE group was in awe of her resilience. I truly don’t know if I could of got myself up to train with all that “noise” in my head.

Barb agreed to talk about her journey back to wellness in the hope of helping others who have set backs, whether it’s cancer, an injury or illness…she wants you to know “there is a light at the end of the tunnel”. On you Barb, you’re pretty spesh!

Tell us about your diagnosis and treatment?
So last year after I turned 40 I thought I would go and do the official old person thing and have a screening mammogram. I guess it’s always been on my radar to some degree as my mother had breast cancer at a young age. Also, my old school friend had just gone and done the same thing only to find there was cancer in the mix. Despite this I really was going to tick the box and be told that it was essentially a waste of time… I really didn’t expect to find anything – that stuff happens to other people!!

In a nutshell we found the cancer super early and there was no spread outside the tissue into the lymph nodes. So within a short space of time I was off to theatre to have a ‘lumpectomy’, and then planned radiotherapy. But as I discovered cancer is not “a clean cut” (pardon the pun!) and over the next 2 months, with more investigations and minor surgery we discovered that there were multiple pockets of cancer throughout. My only sensible option was to have a mastectomy, or risk around a 20% likelihood of recurrence within the next 10 years. The up side is that in taking this option I did not require radiotherapy. So the first bit was relatively easy – minimal interruption to the way I ran my life and ultimately I just had a few flesh wounds that needed recovery. I found the concept of removing “all of it” took a little head space to process, and so the journey from here was as much a head battle as it was a physical one.

What was the hardest change to deal with?
I channelled a lot of my anxiety (don’t think I’ve ever had that before) into being physical whilst I was having the relatively minor procedures building up to the mastectomy – it seriously kept me sane. My brain wasn’t working, but my body still was. So I would say the rest, rest, and more rest for 10 weeks post op was extremely challenging. I remember the day before surgery HH had the 1RM push up challenge and I clearly recall thinking this could be the last push up I could be doing for a while … I managed 15KG I think! I’m really not sure if I will ever be able to do that again – just doing one on my toes would be amazing right now!

How did your exercise regime change after your operation?
My body has changed and, although I am extremely happy with how the reconstruction looks, its function has been changed. My pec muscle was used to recreate the ‘falsie’, so it now sits on top of the implant, so when I use my pec muscle it lifts my boob up with it – great party trick! It actually feels really uncomfortable and weird, and 8 months on I am still ‘rehabbing’ it back to somewhat normal function. I still can’t do much, or as much, upper body exercise. It’s quite remarkable how many body movements involve the pectoralis! Initially 2.5 months post-surgery when my Dr said you can now do “anything” I was bursting out of my skin…even though at that point I hadn’t even been lifting my arm above my shoulder!! No one was going to stop me now…but a few weeks into moving I realised I had taken his words too literally, and had to pull back and listen to my body. Things just weren’t feeling “right”. It’s a funny thing how you can hear what you want to hear isn’t it? But there were, and still are, some things I couldn’t /shouldn’t do for the sake of long term function. I still get pain when I have over used my pec, and it’s tricky finding the line between good pain and bad….still getting biofeedback weekly on that.

What setbacks did you encounter?
There were a number of times when I had to pull back in the early stages – from really basic activities like hanging out washing even – who would have thought I would miss that? I am slowly accepting I have a lifelong limitation in what this area of my body will be able to do, and again that’s as much about the head as it is about the body. What is equally as challenging is how the rest of my body has responded to the inactivity. Research has shown inactivity for 10-13 weeks results in 100% loss of gains – that’s me! Back to the beginning, building cardio and muscle mass, and being a little older than I was when I started training the gains are seemingly a little slower! I also had a little trouble separating upper and lower body exercise (in my head really), and for a little while I didn’t do either! It’s a mind game – I keep reminding myself that consistent effort over time got me to my comfortable place before, and it WILL get me there again… but some days it shits me that I have to fight to get back what I didn’t have control of losing. I would just love to do a push up and lose my muffin top!!!!

What advice would you give others faced with similar challenges?
Simply, prepare for a journey in body and mind, and don’t resist what it brings… the good the bad, the scary, and the amazing! Be kind to yourself and remove any expectations and judgements, and know that the process is far longer than the medical part. But be as physical as you can within your limitations. Hindsight is a powerful thing hey!

I feel lucky most of the time – lucky I went for the mammogram; lucky we found the other bits (or I would have been one of those secondary cancer statistics); lucky I got an immediate reconstruction; lucky I have an amazing family and amazing friends and lucky I got the opportunity to simply sit and watch the birds. The other small amounts of time I feel annoyed and frustrated. The journey back has been a lot bigger and longer than I had prepared myself for. I have tried along the way to use analogies – like pregnancy and giving of the body to that process, and then thinking about the plethora of other injuries and accidents and the multitude of people who suffer them, which helps me feel less alone and more part of the masses of people in the “fight to get it back club”. But ultimately I think what’s different about the cancer journey is has the potential to take us…and that’s both scary and powerful… it’s like having children and seeing the world forever changed, cancer does that too. It’s difficult to put into words how the world looks different, but it just does and so I have slowly discovered, paradoxically, if you survive it, cancer ultimately has been a gift.