This Body is Bullshit

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic. I don’t know if people realize what that meant at the time, but everything was different. Hospitals weren’t allowing visitors. Waiting rooms were quiet and sterile. Everyone was scared. Everything felt uncertain—even the air.

I had to do so much of it alone.

There were tests, biopsies, MRIs, consults with surgeons—things I barely understood at the time, and no one could come with me. I was scared, and even though I had amazing support at home, it’s just not the same as having someone next to you in those moments. No one was there to hear the explanations with me or hold my hand when I got the news. My husband had to drop me off at the hospital doors, and then I had to walk in and face the biggest day of my life—my double mastectomy—completely by myself.

That’s a very specific kind of alone.

In March 2021, I had the surgery—both breasts removed, expanders put in at the same time. I thought that would be the worst of it. I thought that was the scary part. But it wasn’t.

The morning of my mastectomy, Matt drove me to the hospital and had to drop me off at the front door. That was the rule—no visitors, no one allowed inside because of COVID. I remember looking at him, both of us trying to be strong, and I could see how much it broke his heart to leave me there. He didn’t say it, but I know he cried on the way home. I know because I know him. He really loves me. And I’m lucky—I know that too.

We got through it together, just not side by side in the way we wanted. That’s what the pandemic stole from so many people: the presence. He would’ve been right there holding my hand if he could have. But instead, he waited and worried and held it all together from afar.

A month later, I started feeling sick. Really sick. It started slowly and got worse, until I was convinced I had COVID. I ended up at a local hospital, and that’s when they told me I had sepsis.

Sepsis was the scariest part.

My body was shutting down. My veins were collapsing. I felt myself fading. I didn’t tell anyone how bad it was until a year later, because I didn’t want to scare anyone. I do that—I minimize. I survive by staying calm. But looking back, I was absolutely on death’s door. I spent eight days in the hospital. Again, limited visitors. Again, mostly alone.

That experience changed everything for me.

It’s hard to explain what it does to your body and your mind, going through that kind of trauma with no one really around to see it. I remember sitting in that hospital bed thinking, This is it. I thought I had survived cancer only to die from something else. I left the hospital with a PICC line in my arm and had to continue antibiotics for days. And that was just the beginning of the complications.

My plastic surgeon at the time—well, let’s just say he vanished. It felt like he didn’t want to deal with what was happening to me, like I had become a “problem” patient. He was fine when things were textbook, but when they weren’t, he was suddenly out of reach. His PA did a flush in the office that didn’t work. I ended up needing another surgery. New expanders. More drains. And on and on it went.

COVID added this extra layer of silence to everything. I didn’t want to burden people. Everyone was already stressed. The world was upside down. So I smiled when I could. Said I was doing fine. Tried to be “positive.” And I think people believed me. But inside, I was terrified and angry and confused and tired.

So yeah—alone, but not alone. I had support. I had people who loved me. But no one could go through it with me. No one really saw what was happening behind closed doors. No one really saw me nearly die. And I think that made me start carrying everything quietly, like maybe that’s just what I was supposed to do.

Sometimes I still do.