Of course I have heard the word “cancer” since I was child, but the first time I heard it could be me “who has cancer” was actually not so long ago, on the 11th April 2024 (and the “official message” on the 19th April 2024).

Did I invite breast cancer into my life? Absolutely not! (But who knows! As we’re living in a world where anything we do or don’t do can lead to cancer, I cannot be sure what I did wrong 😔)

Do I welcome it? I don’t neither but surprisingly quick, I have accepted it as a part of my life 🥹

Am I in the risk group? Well, more no than yes, I would say 🤔

Short about me and my lifestyle

• I’m “kind of” single, have never given birth, and live alone. This is one of the risk factor I guess.
• I have an office job where I do sit a lot in front of the computer. I can say my work has a medium stress level where we have issues that suddenly arise, deadlines that need to be meet, etc. I work overtime sometimes. However the working conditions are good, both managers and colleges are very supportive.
• I have a normal weight (on the lower side of the healthy BMI scale). I work out regularly but not a gym-addict in any way. I do different exercises from running to strength, but not at a very hard level.
• I try to eat as healthy as I can, although it is difficult for me to avoid junk and ultra-processed food totally.
• I sleep well (maybe too well 😂, I will explain later) and enough (7-8 hours per night, more on the weekends).
• I have health control regularly, at least one per year where all the values in my blood tests were normal (except some low values in D-vitamin or iron, which is quite normal for a place with little sunshine like Norway).
• I have normal social life, no issues with family or friends, no toxic relationship.

And I’m just 37 years old, not a child but not old enough to get the annual breast cancer screening. I’m happy that I didn’t just “take it easy” and wait until my first screening when I’m… 50 years old 😅

So what made me book an appointment with my general practitioner (GP) to check?

I can’t remember when it started, but I have always been feeling tired. It’s hard for me to wake up in the morning even I slept very well during the night. I have very little energy at work, and I’m not kidding, I can lie down and sleep at any moment!

But (another but) I don’t know how tired I am comparing to others. It’s just normal life nowadays that we always have so many things to do and so many things to worry about. Actually everyone around me is always tired also. And compare to other’s lives, I really can’t complain because I have quite an easy life with no kids or huge responsibility at work.

Although I accept my tiredness as a natural part of life, I did try to find the cause. I have went to GP many times “just to check”. But since I had no obvious symptoms of anything, blood test was the only thing he could do. The result did show that I have low level of D-vitamin, low iron. Low D-vitamin is quite common in the place like Norway where the winters are long, cold, and dark. I did take supplement and get to an OK level of everything in my blood test, but the tiredness never went away.

Everything I described about my tiredness actually pointed to the direction of… depression and burnout. These are not uncommon in Norway neither (have you ever heard of winter blue? 😂). But seriously, what do I have to be depressed about? My job’s not that stressful, and my life is pretty chill. Yet everyone insisted, “You can be depressed for no reason! It’s the winter!” Makes sense, sort of, but I was very sure that I didn’t have depression.

In all the process of taking D-vitamin, iron pills, relaxing, thinking positive, more social, etc, I paid very little attention to the lump in my left breast. Well, it has “always” been there – meaning I don’t remember when was the first time I noticed it or if it’s changed at all. I cannot say it’s painful, but my left breast was always more tense than the right one. And if you are woman, then you know our breasts can be hurt sometimes during our cycles.

Time passed until around March this year (2024) I was so motivated to reorganise my life. One of the points I want to do is improving my health by first finding out the root of my tiredness and check out what the lump in my left breast is (even it didn’t hurt, I didn’t even know if it’s was a lump or just “normal muscle”).

Well, the rest you can guess from the title of this post: I have breast cancer. Not exactly the health improvement plan I had in mind.  This was of course a total shock for me (but I will write in another post). With “reorganising my life”, I meant I wanted to improve my health, my career, work out more, more time for my relationship, eat healthier, wake up early, etc. I thought of many things but cancer was never in the picture.

But yes, it came into my life and there is not any easy way to “let it go”. At least, I can tell everyone: “See? I was right. I didn’t have depression or burnt out. I only have breast cancer” 🤗

Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor and I won’t give any medical advice. All I share on this blog is simply my personal experiences based on the treatment plan which was made specifically for me. However, if there is any topic you want me to share more about, please comment below 👇