‘WE SURVIVED BREAST CANCER’
THESE TWO AMBASSADORS SHARE THEIR INSPIRING RECOVERY STORIES
It’s a mother’s first instinct to protect her children. That’s why, when Susanne Novak was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer, she decided to hide it from her sons, Lucas, 8, and Austin, 4.
“I walked around for three months thinking I was going to die. To have been processing that and to be strong for my children, I just couldn’t do both at the same time,” Susanne tells New Idea.
The Melbourne mum felt a 2.3-centimetre lump in her right breast when she was showering. Six days later, she was diagnosed with cancer.
“Within three weeks, on my 44th birthday, I was on the operating table having a mastectomy,” says Susanne, who had nine tumours in total.
Susanne admits that not telling her sons did provide some comedy. One such moment was when her husband, Tim, 47, and the boys arrived at the hospital with a birthday cake.
“I was wearing the socks that have the sticky stuff on the bottom, to stop me falling over,” explains Susanne.
“Austin just looked at me and said, ‘You’ve been to Bounce.’ I said, ‘No, I haven’t.’ And he said: ‘You have, you’ve got the Bounce socks on.’ He was so upset about it,” she laughs.
“That’s the approach I took with the whole thing. Where I could make light of it, I did.”
While Susanne had made the decision not to tell her children, she did confide in a friend at their school.
“I had to tell some people because I needed help with pick-ups and drop-offs, and stuff like that,” she says.
Susanne soon discovered she wasn’t alone.
“During my year of treatment, five mums at the school were diagnosed. We then found another six who’d previously been through this too. The 12 of us formed a club to support each other
‘I HID MY DIAGNOSIS’
through breast cancer – the ‘Port Melbourne Boob Club’. Suddenly, I no longer felt alone. We talked about the ulcers in our mouths, our hair falling out, the creams we used to hide the scars from the operations, the sickness that we were feeling.
“We’d laugh, cry, inject each other and forget what we were saying halfway through our conversations because we had chemo fog.”
Susanne, who recently celebrated five years since her cancer diagnosis, credits those ladies with getting her through the most challenging time of her life.
“Especially as I went through chemo and the loss of hair,” she says.
“Our journeys were very different. But they understood what I was going through.”
Susanne, now 49, finally told Lucas, now 13, and Austin, now 9, about her cancer three years later.
Susanne is now a proud ambassador for the Mother’s Day Classic, an event that brings Aussies together on Mother’s Day to celebrate and honour those affected by breast cancer, and raise vital funds for research.
“I had cancer five years ago, but I’m still on treatment and will be for another five years.
It’s important to support people through this journey, because it just doesn’t go away once you walk out that chemo door,” she says.