The tumor was 4x8 cm. Hormonal. That’s what they told me. Just a fact, a measurement, a clinical truth that somehow failed to capture the enormity of what it meant.

When I walked out of the hospital, I felt like I had landed on Mars. I couldn’t breathe and I was floating in a vacuum where nothing made sense anymore.

Breast cancer personal story from my life

And then, there it was - tucked neatly under my windshield wiper - a 100-euro parking fine.

For a moment, I just stared at it, blinking. A cosmic slap in the face.

Congratulations, you have cancer. Also, pay your fine. As if life was reminding me that no matter what happened inside that hospital, outside, the world would keep moving - without pause, without sentiment. It hurt. Maybe even more than this terrifying diagnosis itself.

The Announcement

At work, my boss asked how I wanted to handle the news. Should they announce my cancer leave? Or did I want to?

I chose control. I sat at my desk and typed:

I have cancer, but I’m going to fight. I’ll treat it like the flu with complications.

I stared at the words. They looked strong. They sounded strong. But they were just words. This wasn’t bravery. This was survival. If I framed it as something temporary, manageable - then maybe I could believe it myself.

The Freefall

Then came the waiting. Endless tests - ultrasounds, PET scans, every imaginable test. And the news kept getting worse.

Metastases in the lymph nodes under my arm. Spots on my liver. My lungs.

I was dying.

At least, that’s what it felt like. The weight of those words was unbearable. I cried and cried, and my two sons - just 17 and 13 - watched helplessly. Their eyes, wide and lost, searching my face for reassurance I couldn’t give.

I was their mother. I was supposed to protect them. Not be the source of their fear.

So I did what I could. I reached out to my friend Ira in Russia, trying to make sense of it all, trying - foolishly - to inject humor into a situation that felt suffocating.

"Irishka, thank you for your kind words! Of course, I will fight, but I’m still in shock - plus the uncertainty with the tests, the chemo, the hair loss, the surgeries. The kids are scared too. I had this thought - maybe I should get hooked on cocaine and just ride this thing out with a smile? 😉 Love you."

It was a joke. A desperate joke. But some part of me clung to the idea that if I could still joke, then maybe I wasn’t gone yet.

China

Then, in the middle of that ocean of fear, I’ve got a thought:

If I only have weeks or months left, why am I wasting them crying?

I wiped my face, walked into the living room, and told my boys: We’re going to China.

A final journey together. Maybe I’d find a cure there. Maybe not. But we would go. We would live.

And then, when the doctors called with a plan - chemo, treatments, a way forward - I wrote SMS to my eldest son Nico:

We are NOT going to China.

His reply came immediately.

"So, you’re NOT dying?"

And in that moment, I understood. China wasn’t just a trip for him. It was my unspoken goodbye. And now, there was hope.

And hope changes everything.

Becoming More

The oncologist told me, “When this is over, you’ll come out of it a completely new person.”

I hated him for that. I wanted to strangle him, to scream. I didn’t want to be a new person. I liked who I was. I didn’t want to lose myself in the process of surviving.

A year later, I realized how wrong I was.

Because you don’t walk through fire and come out untouched. Illness doesn’t just happen to the body- it rewires the soul. It peels away everything you thought was solid and forces you to look at what’s underneath.

And underneath? There was someone I had never met before. A version of me I hadn’t known existed.

I had spent so much time fighting not to change, not to lose myself, that I hadn’t realized:

I wasn’t losing anything.

I was becoming more.

And maybe, just maybe, that was the real cure.