What I learned From My Wife’s Breast Cancer Journey

I was standing in line at airport security at Berlin Brandenburg when I got the call. As soon as I saw my wife’s name on the screen, I answered. She rarely calls cold like that — almost always sends a text. So already the numbness in my gut told me it was bad news.

“There was something on my mammogram,” she said. “They have to do a biopsy.”

“So they don’t know what it is?” I said. “Could be nothing.”

“No,” she replied. “I feel it. I know it. There’s something.”

There was an edge of tears in her voice. Also rare. My wife is from the gritty suburbs of Paris. She doesn’t do melodrama.

I was on my way back from a trip and a few days later I was due to embark on another one — to Valletta in Malta. I had a story to write and I needed a few days of R&R after hosting a conference. Also a break from being a hands-on dad. And probably, although it pains me to admit it, from being a husband.

“I’ll cancel,” I told her. But she dismissed the idea. “If something has to happen,” she said, “you’ll be back in time.”

I arrived in Valletta on Friday November 27. The next Thursday, a day before I was due to leave, my wife called me. “They have to remove my breast,” she told me.

“Shit,” I said. Then I said: “So you’ll be like an Amazon. You’ve always been my warrior.”

I said it in French: ma guerrière. Everything sounds better in French.

The tumour was small — this was a stage two, non-aggressive cancer. Her doctor told her that after her treatment, she would be able to go back to a normal life.

The fear of dying flickered briefly through her mind, she told me, but she’d pushed it aside. She was convinced she’d live to be a very old woman.

“To be honest,” she said, “I’m more worried about my hair falling out.”

My wife is a redhead. She has famously lovely hair.

I was back home in Paris on the day of the operation. On the actual hour of the operation, I was in a café drinking a glass of red wine. There didn’t seem to be much else I could do. I was agonizing inside. I knew she wasn’t going to die, but I couldn’t stand the thought of her being in pain.

If you’d been watching me in that café, I’m sure you’d have seen me shifting and twitching as if somebody was poking me with hot needles.

Later that evening — very much later, it seemed to me — I got a text. “I’m fine. See you tomorrow.”

Visiting hours at the clinic. My wife’s entire torso was bandaged, but she seemed cheerful and chatty. Christmas was on the way and she was determined to enjoy it. If the surgery had been successful, she said, she wouldn’t even have to go through chemo.

On December 21, we had a meeting with her surgeon. He was a dark-haired, very handsome man with a reassuringly soft voice. He told us that the surgery had been successful but, as a precaution, he had recommended chemo. Followed by radiotherapy. Merry Christmas.

I reached for my wife’s hand.

“Will my hair fall out?” she asked.

“Not necessarily.” He told her they had bonnets now — cold caps — that chilled the scalp, squeezing the blood vessels tight so less of the chemo medicine could reach the follicles. “They have proved quite effective,” he said.

We went to a café nearby to digest the news. My wife told me she had a plan. “If I have to do this, I’m going to do everything I can to mitigate the after-effects. If I can, I’m going to try to get something positive out of it.”

And that’s what she did.

First of all, she went to the best hairdresser in Paris and got her hair cut short. It looked fabulous: like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby.

Next, she did something she’d been thinking about for a while: she went to her first yoga class. Since then, yoga has become a vital part of her life. She also started meditating.

The chemo sessions were always tough: when she returned home from one, she usually went straight to bed. But the next morning, she got up and went for a run. It seemed to leach the toxins from her system, because after that she was almost as right as rain.

The cold cap was the worst part, she told me. It was like a giant hand of ice gripping her skull. It hurt. But then she adopted an approach she’d learned from her readings about meditation. She embraced the pain. Explored it, fully experienced it. And in doing so, tamed it.

Because she was on medical leave, she could spend a lot more time with our seven-year-old son. They both loved that.

My son seemed undisturbed by the situation. She explained to him that she’d had an operation, that she was having treatment to make her better, that she’d be fine. He accepted all this.

“Can I see the scar?” he asked.

Since the bandages had come off, I’d glanced at the wound only from time to time, not wishing to offend her by flinching — but also giving myself time to adjust.

But my son wanted to get up close.

“What was it like?” I asked him afterwards.

He made a face. “Pretty big,” he said.

I told him that mummy would be tired, occasionally, so we just had to be kind and not scamper around too much. My job, as I saw it, was to de-dramatize the situation. I pretty much carried on as normal.

It was very British, I suppose: the famous “stiff upper lip.”

My wife seemed happy with that approach. “That’s why I married an Englishman,” she said.

She changed her diet. Sugar was out — sugar, she had been told, is catnip for cancer cells. More fruit, more vegetables. She’s always been a healthy eater, but now she was exemplary. With that and the yoga, her body became wiry and limber. She really did look like a warrior.

About halfway through her chemo, she told me:

“I like myself more than I have in years.”

Her experiences changed me, too. I started getting out of bed earlier. I paid more attention to my surroundings, concentrating on being “in the moment”, as she’d told me. My walk to work became a jazzy collusion of noises and colors, rather than a bland slog that I spent mostly hunched in my anxieties. Thanks to our overhauled eating habits, my sessions at the gym and the swimming pool were far more effective.

I also began thinking about the way we approach illness. Cancer, in particular. That word — it has the dull clang of doom. But it’s not always the end. For my wife, it was a new beginning. The way she tackled the malady, turning it on its head to wrench every grain of positivity out of it, made any problem seem potentially surmountable.

My wife finished chemo at the beginning of July. On August 14, she had her last radiotherapy session. We celebrated over lunch near the Place Madeleine. It felt as though we had survived a war.

So how was she, my wife?

She still had hair, albeit shorter than before and flecked with grey (she plans to dye it soon). She had lost her eyelashes, which I told her made her look like a sexy alien. She was lean and strong, and the courage she’d shown during her treatment made me love her more fiercely than ever.

She has only one breast. No getting around that. But our sex life hasn’t suffered unduly. The smooth patch of chest looked weird to me at first, I won’t deny it. But I’m getting used to it. Neither of us are bothered about reconstructive surgery for the time being.

“This is me now,” she said. “Besides, I’ve got other things to spend my money on.”

I asked her what she had in mind.

“I thought I’d go to India.”

I raised my glass to her. It was really — really — the least I could do.