Everything I Touch
25 years ago, I had a bilateral mastectomy. I was 31. This is what I've never fully told.
I was planning to get pregnant.
That was the goal for the spring of 2001. My son was two. My construction business was underway... I was managing my first two builds. Life was full and moving fast and I had no reason to slow down.
But that autumn, a family friend was diagnosed with breast cancer in her sixties. She kept saying to me, “Get a mammogram. Just to be safe.” I was 31. Nobody gets a mammogram at 31. None of my doctors had ever mentioned it. But my father’s mother had died of breast cancer at 42. My father was eight years old when he lost her. So I listened.
My mammogram was booked for March. But I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to be pregnant by then. So I called the mammography center again and again until I found a cancellation.
December 22, 2000. Three days before Christmas.
I went alone. The waiting room was empty. I expected nothing. The mammogram tech almost turned me away because I was still lactating. She was rude about it. But I stuck to my mission and insisted on having the mammogram my doctor had ordered at my request.
The radiologist came out of the reading room with a face I will never forget. He asked why a 31-year-old woman was there for a mammogram. I told him for a baseline. My heart started racing the moment I heard the words breast cancer. He said the hair was standing on the back of his neck... that three days before Christmas, he had found a 4mm cluster of pleomorphic calcifications. Invisible to the touch. It would not have been palpable for years.
I was stunned. I cried the whole way home.
Christmas that year was something I had to get through. I sat with my toddler on Christmas Eve, then Christmas morning, trying to be present for him while having no idea how far the cancer had gone. It would be weeks before I’d know. No more tests during the holidays. Just waiting. Just praying.
My biopsy came in January. Then 10 days of silence before they called with pathology. I was driving when my phone rang. The cells were cancerous. Intermediate to high grade... the kind that likes to metastasize. But I had caught it before it left its original site. Barely.
If I had gone ahead and gotten pregnant without knowing, the hormones would have fed the cancer. I would not be writing this today.
I went from the holiday season thinking I was going to be happily trying for another baby to pausing my life entirely. I was building my first two homes under my own construction company, managing a job site, and suddenly I was a breast cancer patient at 31 doing research late into the night about a world I never expected to enter.
The first hospital sat me down and told me what they were going to do. A lumpectomy. Radiation. They didn’t ask me what I wanted. They directed me. They made it sound like I had to do it right away.
I said, “Hold on.”
I left that hospital and took my case to Boston. I interviewed four of the best breast surgeons in the city. I read Susan Love’s Breast Book cover to cover. I spoke with young women who had been through it... on the phone, because there was no Zoom, no FaceTime. Some of them were brave enough to show me their scars so I could understand what I was deciding.
One male surgeon told me he was going to talk to my husband to stop me from having a mastectomy on my healthy breast. It took me nearly an hour of questions before the surgeons would tell me what they actually knew about my odds based on my age and cell type. They had the answers. They just weren’t offering them.
I pushed until they did.
I made a choice to remove my healthy breast because I wanted to get as far away from the risk of breast cancer as possible. I had spoken with too many young women who told me it came back, or showed up in the other breast, or happened to their sister. I figured I had been given a chance to not repeat history... and I wanted to do everything I could to ensure that.
The morning of April 2, 2001, I left the house for a six-hour surgery. My mother, who was staying with my son, said something like, “Keep thinking of the little guy.” She was choked up. Her 31-year-old daughter was leaving for something no one expected.
I had a Reiki master come to the hospital. I had Peggy Huddleston’s Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster playing on a cassette tape in my Walkman, with Theo’s picture taped to it. Days before, I had written a six-page goodbye letter to my breasts... sealed it in an envelope I still haven’t opened, 25 years later. Peggy had encouraged me to pre-mourn the loss so I could walk into surgery with closure.
And I did. Just before they rolled me into the operating room, my surgeon, Dr. Carolyn Kaelin... the director of the Breast Center at Brigham and Women’s... looked me in the eye and said, “I fully support your decision.” She was the only surgeon who ever said that to me. That was a gift I will never forget.
I went under anesthesia listening to Peggy’s tape on repeat. When I woke up, my father was standing in my hospital room.
He had driven to Boston by himself. He never drove to Boston by himself. He didn’t like it. But he came. No other family members visited. Just my dad.
My father’s name was Anastasios. In Greek, it means Resurrection.
The months after surgery were harder than the surgery itself. The adrenaline wore off and I fell into a dark stretch. Why me. None of my friends were going through this. I had tall weeds growing on the lots of the first homes I was supposed to be building. My bank was calling, asking why construction had stalled.
I was still breastfeeding at the time of my diagnosis. I had to stop cold turkey to deal with the biopsy and everything that followed. That was its own grief... closing the chapter on something I loved, knowing I would never nurse another child again.
Dana Farber called me after reviewing a survey I’d filled out. They said my responses indicated clinical depression. By the time they reached me, I was already pulling myself out. But it was real. It was there.
And then one day, I was standing in a hallway at Brigham and Women’s, and my phone rang. It was Dr. Kaelin. She was calling to tell me my cancer was behind me. “Go live your life,” she said. “If you want to have more children, go have more children.”
If that phone call had never come, I’m not sure I would have had the courage.
My daughter was born two weeks early on Christmas morning. I had asked God for a sign that I made the right choice. She arrived on the holiest morning of the year. I named her Anastasia... after my father. After the Resurrection.
A few months later, I wrote in her baby journal: “Each day I stop and say to God how thankful I am that we have little Anastasia.”
Dr. Kaelin’s phone call is the reason my daughter is here. And my youngest son after her.
Dr. Kaelin herself was later diagnosed with young breast cancer. She survived it. Then she died at 54 from a separate cancer, unrelated. The woman who gave me permission to live didn’t get to keep her own life. I carry her with me still.
Twenty-five years later, my scars are still there. Long, pink, persistent. I have complete acceptance of my body. I’ve shared this with women who spent years apologizing for their reconstruction, feeling embarrassed by an imperfect chest. They told me they were so glad I said what I said... because they had been carrying that shame alone.
We are so much more than what our skin looks like. The wholeness of our being is deeper than any scar. That’s where the beauty lives... beyond the skin of every human.
I fought to see my son grow up. He graduated from college. So did his sister. Their youngest brother is in college now. I’m 56. I’m healthy.
If you’re reading this and you just got the call... or you’re sitting in the car, stunned, trying to figure out what comes next... here is what I want you to hear.
Take your time. You likely have more of it than they’re making you feel. Ask if you have time to make a decision. When we hear the word cancer, we think we have to act immediately. Sometimes you do. But not every time. Get a second opinion. Get a third. Come armed with questions and do not leave until they answer you honestly. Advocate for yourself... no one else will do it the way you will.
See a specialist. General practice doctors and gynecologists are not as informed as a breast cancer specialist. Be aware of who you put your trust into. Talk to other women who’ve been through it. Dig into your family history, both sides... paternal matters just as much as maternal, and most doctors don’t know that.
And share your story. I stayed quiet about mine for years. Not because I was embarrassed... I just wanted to get back to my normal life as a young mother. It wasn’t how things were done back then. No social media. No online communities. Just phone calls and silence. My friends didn’t bring it up. I didn’t bring it up. And that kept me more isolated than it needed to.
Talk to the women in your world. It helps us know we’re not alone. It helps us navigate with more clarity. And it opens doors for other women who are still standing in the waiting room by themselves, the way I was.
And trust your intuition. I didn’t know to call it that at 31. But something in me pushed for that mammogram when no doctor had suggested it. Something in me said “hold on” when that first hospital tried to rush me. Something in me knew which surgeon to trust. I’ve leaned on that inner knowing many times since. It’s there for a reason. But you have to slow down long enough to hear it. Stop rushing through life long enough to pay attention to what you already know.
Never, ever feel less of a woman because of what this disease asks you to give up. Your body is not broken. It is doing exactly what it needs to do to keep you alive.
My grandmother died of breast cancer nearly 80 years ago. She was 42 years old, on a remote Greek island that took three hours by boat to reach the mainland. There was no healthcare for her. By the time she knew, it was too late. My father was eight years old, the last son still at home, caring for her as she was dying.
On her deathbed, she said to him... My little boy, my little boy... may everything you touch turn to gold.
She never knew that her own life became a thread of gold I’ve followed through mine. Her history informed my decisions. It changed the trajectory of my life. It gave me the chance to do what she never got to do... survive cancer and raise her children.
Her story is the reason I had a family history at all. That history is what pushed me to ask for a mammogram at 31 when no doctor had suggested one. And that mammogram is the reason I was able to make a decision... to have a double mastectomy with reconstruction at 31, going against what most of the surgeons were telling me... that gave me my life back. The reconstruction was part of feeling whole again. Part of choosing to move forward on my own terms.
I did not want my son to grow up without his mother the way my father did. He didn’t have to. None of my children did. And I got to raise all three of them.
This is the full circle. Grandmother to father to me to the daughter I named Anastasia... for the Resurrection.
I am 56 years old. I am healthy. I am a mother, a builder, a woman who refuses to let anyone else make her decisions for her.
And it is because of her that I am still here today... to share her touch of gold with you.
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This Wednesday evening, I’m hosting a live conversation for anyone who wants to talk about any of this. Survivors, supporters, women going through it right now. Details coming tomorrow.
This essay reflects my personal experience only and is not medical advice. Every diagnosis is unique. Please consult your own physicians and specialists for guidance on your care.
Thank you for sharing this so openly….
There is nothing on this planet like the force of a loving, brave, courageous, and resolute mother.
It comes through in every line you wrote, and in what you’ve built beyond it…. A beautiful testament your children will carry with them and hold onto… that strength is not a single moment, but something lived and passed down.
Beautiful…absolutely beautiful! Thanks for sharing with your community, that is how we support each other and build each other up. Just beautiful.❤️