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 Contents

Dedication

Introduction
The Turd
The ‘Now What?’ Bit
Before the Turd
Boys
Getting to Know the Turd
I Made a Scarf
The (Poo-Coloured) Cancer Poster Girl
Friends in High Places (With Too Many Christmas Trees)
One-Tit Wonder
The Glitter
Being Scared But Doing It Anyway
He-Man
Epic-Genetics
Life on Film
C-Word, The Movie
Going to the Maldives
Imposter Syndrome with a Floppy Hat
Time to Sharpen My Saw
Alive to Do Those Things
Chewing on a Dandelion
The Year of the Sugar Cube
Breathe
Worthiness
A Strong Reason for Living
In Summary: Not Dead

Afterword
Acknowledgements
Supporters
Plates
Copyright
 Introduction

I did not expect to be diagnosed with breast cancer at twenty-three. I also

did not expect to write a book about it during a global pandemic. But here
we are. If there’s something to learn from life (aside from its
unpredictability) it’s that turds come in varying shapes, sizes and guises.
You might find this hard to believe after the shitshow that was 2020, but
even the most unpolishable turds are glitterable – let’s face it, that stuff gets
everywhere. This is the story of someone who glittered hers (that’s a plural
– I got greedy) and decided it was worth sharing with the world in the hope
it helps others find greater meaning too.
But I do have a tiny confession. I set off to write this book in a bid to
help you, the reader, not really fully appreciating that it would help heal the
one person I thought was already healed: me. I had every intention to write
this purely for your sake (you’re welcome), I wanted so badly to move
people (like Oprah), but throughout the process I realised that I was doing
the very thing that all this was supposed to have taught me I didn’t need to
do: namely, please others. My cancer diagnosis was a harsh lesson to stop
expending all my energy on everything and everyone, and go inwards. This
book forced me to do the same. This book has become a manual into my
inner workings. This book helped me discover me. In aiming to show you
all the meaning I’d discovered, all I found was the inner workings of yours
truly.
However, on my journey to that epiphany I leave a trail of breadcrumbs
(or glitter – you decide) that I think will help you too, because the truth is
that we all have turds that need glittering, and sometimes it helps to follow
someone’s already trodden path. Are we done with the turd analogy now?
OK, let’s go . . .
 The Turd

‘Is there anyone here with you today?’

I thought that was a pretty odd question for the nurse to ask me as I
waited for my breast clinic appointment on that Thursday morning in 2009.
‘My mum’s just coming,’ I replied. ‘She’s parking the car.’ As per usual, the
car park was full and we Hallengas have a tendency to be on time to things
– never early, not usually late, just on time – so it didn’t give us the chance
to hunt for a space before having to get to my appointment. That question
was unsettling, but so too was our cat, Lucky, coming to sit on my lap
before we left the house. This wasn’t something he normally did, especially
since he’d already been fed.
In her book The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes
‘confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the
circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred’. Unremarkable
maybe, but every aspect of that day is so vivid and so indelibly etched into
my brain even now.
I was feeling a little the worse for wear. I’d spent the previous night in
Birmingham with a friend getting unreasonably happy on midweek
cocktails. The day before had been my dead father’s birthday, and was also
the anniversary of the day my sort-of-ex-boyfriend and I had got together a
few years before. I was, in other words, drinking to forget. I wondered
whether my sore head made me misjudge the weather and thus my outfit
choice. For some reason I’d decided to wear a miniskirt, with tights and
high boots and an oversized belt (a fashion faux pas I somehow forgot to
leave in the 1990s), a T-shirt and a long cardigan that I’d bought at Urban
Outfitters in the sale the day before. It was a windy, chilly day; it would be
– it was February.

Without waiting for my mum to arrive, the nurse took me into the tiny,
clinical consultation room. It was cold. I was cold. She sat me on the one
and only chair. As I waited for the consultant to come in, I wondered where
he would sit. Would he lean or sit on the bed? Or should I, as the patient, sit
on the bed? I mean, was I even a patient? I wasn’t sick. This could get
awkward, I thought. Before I could make any seating changes, he walked
in, with an unexpected entourage. There was a registrar and two nurses,
making the already small room feel even more airless. We swiftly got
through the pleasantries and on to the main event: biopsy results.
‘I was concerned about the fact your grandma had breast cancer at a
young age. I am sorry. It’s not good news. You have breast cancer.’
WHAT.
JUST.
HAPPENED?
I was partly still stuck on the fact he was concerned about my grandma
having breast cancer when she was thirty. When I’d first told him, he’d
dismissed that detail pretty swiftly – it was apparently not a strong enough
link; one family member isn’t enough to increase risk. I couldn’t bring this
up with him now, though; in fact, I couldn’t find any words at all. What
could I possibly say? In my head I was saying what? and shit and how?
again and again. I felt like my breath had been sucked out of me. I was
sobbing; I felt nauseous; I felt faint; I wasn’t really there. I was there
physically, but somehow I was watching it all happen from the outside of
my body. I felt like a surveillance camera hanging from the corner of the
room, capturing a life being shattered.
The next thing I knew, Mum was in the room. She could, of course, tell
from my distraught face that I had just been told some pretty horrendous
news. The doctor repeated what he’d told me. And Mum burst into tears. I
remember her first words like I’m still there: ‘It should be me, not you.’
In interviews it’s always one of the first questions I get asked: ‘How did
it feel to be diagnosed?’ But I don’t really know – I can’t describe it well
enough. I mean, I could use a lot of expletives. One hundred and fifty
women per day (that’s about one woman every ten minutes) are told the
same news I was told that day, and how I describe that moment would
probably be no different from the way they would. It was simply shit. And
more than that, it was baffling. I was baffled that this was the first time the
word ‘cancer’ had come up, and my journey to this very moment made this
all the more bewildering, too.
So let’s rewind, shall we?
My relationship with my boobs was a pretty normal one. I could never
understand the fuss girls made about having small ones or too-big ones. I
guess I was lucky; I just had fairly normal-sized ones. My boobs and I
were, in short, ticking along in life just fine. I never got a bra fitted; like
many puberty topics that Mum never broached with us, the subject never
came up, so it was more of a fend-for-yourself situation. So I made the (I
thought) excellent decision to upgrade from my white vest to buying my
first underwired bra from Next myself. It had a cat on it.
But when I was with my first boyfriend aged seventeen, I started to
notice my boobs more. I noticed that my left one was smaller than my right.
I was with a boy who couldn’t give a hoot; I could have had cyclops boobs
for all he cared – he adored me. But it started to bother me, and so when I
noticed a mole growing on my right boob I thought it was a good
opportunity, or rather an excuse, to visit my GP and bring up the boob-size
situation. This GP would end up being the same GP who a few years later
would tell me my lumpy boob was ‘normal’. And back then she thought my
mole was normal (which it was) and the fact it was growing on a boob that
was substantially larger than my other boob was totally ‘normal’ as well. I
would discuss my asymmetrical boob woes with the boyfriend, and
momentarily he’d make me feel better about it all, saying that I could do
something about it if I really wanted. And I guess he was right. And if it had
bothered me that much, I might have. But instead I got on with life.

Two years later I was forced to notice my boobs again, as they’d left a little
orange mark on the inside of my white T-shirt bra. This, ladies and
gentlemen, is known as nipple discharge, possibly the worst words in the
English dictionary. And yes, it is one of the symptoms of breast cancer. And
no, I did not know this at the time. And yes, when I look back now, it was
really gross. I was nineteen at this point and my then boyfriend would
notice it and sometimes squeeze a bit out, but not once did he suggest I get
it checked out. But I guess I can’t blame him, as much as I would like to. I
too presumed it was normal, that this stuff happened to girls my age. But it
doesn’t. Girls shouldn’t have bloodstained liquid coming out of their
nipples, EVER. So I lived with a lopsided chest and a leaky boob for about
two to three years. Yup, writing that makes me feel really foolish and really
embarrassed, and yeah, throw in some shame for good measure. But, I
convince myself, without someone telling you differently, how would you
ever know it wasn’t right!? I refuse to blame myself – mainly because, well,
it wouldn’t change anything, and my reality is hard enough without the
guilt. It wasn’t until my boob started to become painful that I thought it
needed further investigation.

As all of this was going on, I was also trying to figure life out. After two
years out of education and some coaxing from my mum, I had enrolled in
an HND (a Higher National Diploma) in travel and tourism management at
Northampton University. Towards the end of it we were given the decision
to stay on for another year to get ourselves a full degree, but I didn’t care
about a degree. I wanted out – and fast, and since the boy I had been going
out with was in China, I made it my mission to find myself a job over there,
doing what I thought would be the dream – working in tourism! I scored
myself an internship through a school in Beijing, which would allow me to
not only work at a French–Chinese travel company and thus earn money,
but also learn Mandarin too. I felt like I’d finally won at life.
Before that adventure began, my twin sister, Maren, and Mum arranged a
short girls-only trip to Barcelona, as we weren’t sure when I’d be back from
China, and when we could next spend this kind of time together. One
evening, while in our hotel room, I mentioned to them that I had a hard area
on the top half of my left boob, and that it was quite painful. My toes curled
telling them; this wasn’t our usual topic of conversation. But maybe by
telling them I could stop worrying. They would tell me to stop being silly,
wouldn’t they? My annoyingly larger right boob was sans lumpy area, so I
wanted their opinion on the matter: I wanted them to tell me they had the
exact same thing happening with their boobs. Instead Maren agreed it was a
bit odd. Mum, ever the one to imagine worst-case scenarios, demanded I go
to the GP ASAP. As much as I was disappointed that moment didn’t end in
them poking fun at me for, ya know, thinking a leaky, painful boob wasn’t
normal, for once I appreciated Mum insisting that I get it checked out (not
that she ever voiced her worry that it could be cancer, but she may well
have been thinking it). So on our return I booked an appointment to see our
GP, the same one we’d been seeing for years. She examined me, asked me
about my periods, then declared: ‘It’s probably hormonal.’
I was taking the progesterone-only ‘mini-pill’ at the time, which she
thought could be the cause. I told her of my impending adventures in
Beijing, and she thought it best not to try a new contraceptive pill before I
left in case I didn’t get on with it very well. I happily agreed. Instead she
recommended I take evening primrose oil to help with the tenderness. I was
over the bloody moon. It was exactly what I wanted to hear. In my mind I
was already in Beijing, and for anyone or anything to scupper that plan was
not an option.

And off I buggered. Beijing was one of those places you would either find a
fun challenge or hellishly frustrating. The people, the culture, the traffic, the
bureaucracy, everything was overwhelming at times, but I loved it. I
absorbed it all and engrossed myself in the life of an expat Beijinger. My
boyfriend at the time was no longer in China so I was there alone, finding
my feet through the friends I made at the language school. Each morning
I’d fight my way onto the overcrowded metro to my office job in a high-rise
overlooking buildings that had sprung up in literal days in preparation for
the Olympics. At weekends, when it was guaranteed to be sunny (because
the government ensured it was), I’d ride my rickety bike that I bought off a
German, a fellow student from the school who’d returned home, and
meander down the many little hutongs taking in the innumerable aromas
that city back streets offer. I was having a real-life adventure, and although I
ended up hating the internship and later quitting to teach English (and by
teach, I mean repeat words over and over in the hope that they’d stick), I
learned a lot, grew up a lot and started to get to know myself a little more.
Some nights I noticed some discomfort when lying on my front. My left
boob would sometimes even feel like it was burning up. I dutifully downed
as much evening primrose oil as I could; in my head, it was helping,
because the GP told me it would. When I ran out I even got Mum to send
me more – I didn’t risk trying to find it or an equivalent in Beijing.
I went out a lot. I lived as hedonistic a life as I could have wanted,
stumbling out of nightclubs as the sun was rising. One wintery evening I
went out with a couple of friends but decided to not drink, as I was already
feeling a bit off. At the small bar we were standing in I started to feel
horrendously faint and made the decision to head home. As soon as I got to
my apartment I found myself hugging the toilet. Suddenly, as I retched, I
felt something ‘ping’ in my lower spine. This turned me into a very slow-
shuffling granny for the following two or three weeks. It didn’t really ever
get better, only manageable. I can remember thinking how unfortunate and
unfair it was that I’d been so unwell without even drinking, and then to hurt
myself as I puked! I made up for it with proper alcohol-fuelled nights as
soon as my back allowed. Then Christmas time arrived and I wanted to be
home. The lease on my apartment was up and so was my time at the school.
My teaching jobs were non-contractual (cash in hand) so I took the
opportunity to leave Beijing with a vague plan to hopefully return in the
New Year, perhaps with a visa and, who knows, maybe some actual
teaching qualifications.
I made an appointment with my GP as soon as I landed, as there were a
few things I wanted to discuss with her, including, of course, my boob. My
GP was on holiday, so I got the substitute male doctor, who I already wasn’t
a big fan of. I never appreciated his abruptness and uncaring tone. And this
appointment was no different. The fact I knew them all so well makes it
sound like I visited the GP a lot, and I suppose I did. In my early twenties I
had recurring cystitis and UTIs (until I learned a pint of water after sex and
flushing out my bladder would stop it from happening – it would help if
they taught you such life hacks at school) that required a lot of antibiotic
prescriptions. I had also suffered from headaches for as long as I could
remember, so trying to get to the cause of those involved many doctors too.
I mentioned to the GP that my boob lump had not got any better, and in fact
was starting to feel more tender. The only response I got out of him was that
I could switch my contraceptive pill if I wanted to, but that the examination
I had received seven months earlier by the lady GP would suffice and was
enough evidence to suggest that this was ‘hormonal’. And that was it. Case
closed.
On telling Mum what had happened at the surgery, her frustration turned
to anger. How could he not even suggest a referral, she fumed, or at the
very least examine my boob? I felt a bit silly for not pushing it more.
Perhaps I’d played it down too much; perhaps Mum was right and I should
have demanded a referral. I decided to make another appointment for when
my own GP was back from her holiday. She’d felt my boob before, so could
tell me if it had changed. Still nonchalant and unbothered by my recalling
of the last seven months, she reluctantly referred me to the breast clinic at
Northampton Hospital. She warned that, because I was under thirty, and
thus a very non-urgent case, it could take six weeks for the appointment.
In the meantime, a New Year’s family skiing trip had been arranged,
which I was looking forward to – returning home from Beijing was a hard
adjustment. I was in a quandary about what to do next, whether to go back
to China or perhaps somewhere new, or spend some time with Maren in
Cornwall while I figured out my next steps. I knew the ski trip would help
keep my mind off life decisions for another week at least. We had joined up
two families: ours, and Maren’s boyfriend Graham’s family – his dad,
stepmum, brother and sister. I had never skied before, not even on a fake
snow slope, but I think that was to my advantage, as I had no fear, and
would just launch myself down some (admittedly pretty pathetic) little hills.
There were injuries but luckily not for me, and as attention was on our
invalids, no one noticed I was in the corner holding a heat pad to my lower
spine and my boob. That is how bad the pain had become. Yup, I know.

On our return home a hospital letter was waiting for me, inviting me to an
appointment at Northampton General Hospital’s breast clinic in six weeks’
time. Mum came in handy again, pushing me to call them daily to see if
there were any cancellations. I managed to score myself an appointment
with a consultant ten days later. As promised, my GP had referred me to the
boob specialist for further examinations and presumably some tests. This
was my first step on the ladder of the breast cancer system: a meeting with a
consultant surgeon, not a Dr, but a Mr.
At that first appointment Mr Dawson asked me questions I was pretty
much expecting: when did I notice the lump? Was there a family history of
breast disease? Was I on the pill? Did I have regular periods? All my
answers were a bit wishy-washy; the only thing I could say for sure was
that Nanna had breast cancer at thirty, but she didn’t die – in fact she only
had a mastectomy, no further treatments, and went on to have kids and live
a long and happy life until the age of seventy-five. He carried out an
ultrasound to see the difference in substance of my two boobs, and to rule
out a cyst – which would show up as a liquid. The scan confirmed that my
lump was indeed a hard, non-liquid one, but before he could take this any
further he wanted me to wait three weeks to see if coming off the pill would
make any difference to my hormones and thus the lump. Hormones. My
stupid hormones again.
I wasn’t convinced. I’d had weird periods all my life, so it’s not like I
could say for sure whether my boobs changed with my cycle. Also I had no
clue when my cycle was, that’s how irregular they were. But what could I
do? Stamp my feet and demand further examinations there and then?
Perhaps some people might, but I didn’t. And so I waited for three long
weeks.
By this time my lower back had been giving me all kinds of grief.
Visiting Maren in Cornwall, I decided to visit a chiropractor, a lovely lady
named Helen. She treated me three times before concluding it wasn’t
getting any better. She was one of the good chiropractors, the ones who
don’t keep seeing you, not fixing you and taking your money anyway; she
encouraged me to get an X-ray instead. Which I did. But the results were
going to take a couple of weeks, and so my breast appointment came before
the X-ray results.
This time in my life was particularly weird. It felt like life had stalled;
every time I started to think about making plans to go back to China or get
teaching qualifications, I felt that I was stuck until I knew what was going
on with my body. To earn a little bit of pocket money I spent some time in
Cornwall life modelling (don’t get too excited, with my clothes on) for art
students. I felt so bad telling them after five minutes that I needed to sit
down, that the pain in my back was too much.
Back home I spent a night out with one of my best friends, Lou, staying
at our pal Adam’s house in Milton Keynes. After a night of dancing at
Oceana (name-checking it here purely so I never forget that such places
existed and were part of my youth) and general silliness, Lou and I shared a
bed at Adam’s. Waking up, somewhat blurry that Saturday morning, I
noticed a big damp patch down my front. On inspection I saw an orange
liquid had obviously leaked out of my boob in the night, staining my T-shirt
and, very embarrassingly, the duvet cover too. I was mortified. My boob
had wet the bed! Lou called her mum, who was a nurse at the same surgery
I had been going to, to get her advice. She was calm, reassured both me and
Lou that it would be fine. Only recently did I discover that Lou’s mum was
secretly really concerned about what was happening to me, but hid it well,
thinking there was no point in alarming me when I had follow-up
appointments imminently. But when I got home and showed Mum my T-
shirt, her anger turned to rage. ‘If this ends up being worse than we think, I
am thumping your GP.’ Just so you know, Mum is not violent in any way,
ever. She obviously didn’t mean it, although I would love to have watched
my mum deck a male doctor.
I didn’t dare ask her what she meant by ‘worse than we think’.
Along came the day of the follow-up with Mr Dawson. I told him of my
night-time boob explosion; I even took the T-shirt as evidence, as by this
point I didn’t want anyone to convince me that this was nothing, even
though I’d given very little thought to what the opposite of nothing could
be. At last there seemed to be a shift. He wanted me to have a mammogram
there and then, followed by a biopsy. I didn’t know what any of this stuff
entailed. Mum had had a couple of routine mammograms and had told me
how they clamped your boobs, but nothing prepared me for the pain. Of
course it hurt: not only was it crushing my breast away from my body, it
was squashing what was by then a six- by nine-centimetre growth. I leaked
some orange liquid onto the scanning plate; I glanced at the nurse to see her
reaction, but she wore her best poker face. On the inside I was dying of
embarrassment, and my face probably gave that away.
I struggled to get on to the bed for my biopsy. The gentle-voiced
radiologist asked me what was wrong and I told him of my Beijing
escapades and that night I puked and put my back out. He chuckled. And
then proceeded to insert a giant needle into my boob with the aim of
grabbing a little bit of the growth so it could be sent off for tests. He didn’t
manage it on the first go (it did look pretty fiddly) but after a second painful
prod he was happy that he’d managed to get enough to biopsy. He was
doing all of this while looking at an ultrasound screen. There I was, lying on
a bed staring at a screen like an expectant mum. Only I wasn’t looking
lovingly at my growing baby but at a potential mutant growth. And instead
of finding out the sex, we’d be waiting to hear if it was there to kill me or
not.
‘I can’t tell you that this is nothing to worry about,’ he said, candidly.
I am not sure why he felt the need to say this, but I was grateful for the
honesty.

One week later I was back receiving the results in that cold, tiny, clinical
consultation room.
‘There are three things you need to remember from this news,’ Mr
Dawson said.
I remembered none of them. His voice became noise as I tried
desperately to stay composed. The radiologist had told him of my struggle
to get on to the bed during my biopsy and so he’d ordered some further
scans to happen over the next few days, with a follow-up appointment to
see him with results a week from then. He mentioned an operation to
remove the lump and with it my boob. He seemed keen to do that soon.
There were probably more words exchanged, but it’s a blur now. I walked
out of the room clasping a blue folder full of pamphlets about breast cancer,
the surgery, support groups. The folder signifying my membership of a club
I hadn’t applied to nor wanted to be in. A members-only club whose
membership fee you wouldn’t want to pay even if you could afford it.
The breast cancer club.
 The ‘Now What?’ Bit

Is there a word for knowing something to be real but not believing it?
Because, that. I couldn’t quite process what I had just been told, yet as we
walked out of the hospital Mum and I were already discussing how I would
be fine. How I had to be fine. I knew absolutely nothing about cancer but
It’s going to be OK became my internal mantra. We didn’t know this for
sure, but that didn’t really matter; at that moment you fool yourself into
believing anything.
‘We will deal with this. It’s going to be fine’ were Mum’s robotic,
encouraging, yet very unconvincing words. But our strides to the car
matched our determination. I can confidently say that I was trying to keep
my shit together for my mum’s sake, and I have no doubt she was doing the
same for me. We were both in complete disbelief. I had just been told I had
breast cancer: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.
It wasn’t long before I had to say the words ‘I have cancer’ aloud. My
aunty Rosemary was staying with us, and my older sister Maike was at
home during her half-term break from teaching in London. I wasn’t sure
what they could read from our faces; no doubt they could sense it was bad
news, but not in a million years did they expect me to share the worst news
possible. Their disbelief, confusion and bewilderment matched ours. And
once that was out of the way, bizarrely, we stuck the kettle on and carried
on the day as normal. We had planned to visit some family and so we did.
We sat in my mum’s aunt’s living room, discussing the weather and other
really important topics. But my mind was of course far, far away in a new
cancer-land. I was sitting on the sofa but inside my head I was bouncing off
the walls, running around in a frenzy asking WHY and WHAT and HOW