In her own words: Mix 102.3 star Ali Clarke opens up on her confronting breast cancer ordeal

Radio personality Ali Clarke has opened up about how quickly her life changed after what was supposed to be a routine check for a different problem altogether.

It was perfectly normal afternoon and I was driving to pick up our youngest daughter, entrenched in working out if I could trick the kids into a second night of brown rice, when she rang.

I normally ignore numbers I don’t know, but for whatever reason I answered to hear the calm and assured voice of a women from Breast Screen SA asking me to come back in as they had found something they wanted another look at on my mammogram.

To be honest, I had completely forgotten I’d even had one.

I had no family history, no lumps nor bumps and was the “right” side of 50, so it was a conversation about peri-menopause with my wonderful GP that had me getting one in the first place.

It was a sideline, a box to be ticked so we could get about working through the other joys of aging; it was never meant to actually find something.

Fast forward two more scans, an ultrasound and a biopsy which meant they had definitely found something, and I was sitting alone in a Balinese hotel room waiting to find out just how bad it was.

Ali Clarke at home after her breast cancer surgery. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Yep, in the ultimate move of f**k you, my pre-booked, solo, Jetstarred holiday was now thoroughly hijacked and whilst nothing prepares you for being told you have cancer, nothing prepares you for the thoughts that run through your head whilst waiting for results.

In those four days, I cried, I laughed, I bargained whilst pretending I wasn’t scared, but by the time I flew over central Australia I was planning my funeral whilst simultaneously wondering why it wasn’t a drug dealer or child abuser that had this instead of me.

It was almost a relief when via a video link, a breast surgeon confirmed what we had been dreading, that they had found two 5-9mm tumours and they were cancerous.

But, and as I’ve found over the last few months there is always a good (but mainly bad) but, then came the news that anything under two centimetres meant we had caught it early and it was the “good” type of tumour.

Amongst other things which meant chemo was unlikely and it was fed by my hormones, so in other words, it wasn’t my lifestyle nor choices that had got me here, ergo it wasn’t my ‘fault’.

Up until that moment, between the denial and fear, I was trapped in a battle of pretending I wasn’t re-examining every bit of my life.

Was it that extra glass of wine I didn’t say no to, the crap food I had eaten, the unkind thoughts I had had about someone?

In fact, it almost became a badge of honour when I had to start telling people what was going on, and my script became, “yes I’ve got cancer, but it’s no drama and perfectly fine because they’ve got it early and my doc says they should be able to take it out easily and besides, they are estrogen fed, so you know, it’s not my fault.”

Ali Clarke at home after her breast cancer surgery . Picture: Tricia Watkinson

Ali Clarke with her husband Matthew and kids Eloise, Sam and Madelyn. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Looking back, I can now recognise just how quickly I became two people.

On the inside I was churning, full of doubt and anxiety, whilst on the outside I was a protector of others, massaging the message to make them feel OK by pretending I was.

My elderly, interstate parents who had enough to worry about caring for my disabled brother, my colleagues and friends who could be uncomfortable or triggered and even my husband who didn’t deserve to keep coming home to someone crying or feeling down when he needed his own energy for the kids and work

And anyway, how do you actually tell people? Ringing them up out of the blue and dropping it on them, felt more than a little self-serving … almost indulgent.

In fact, almost because of that, telling our three young children was single handedly one of the easiest, yet toughest conversations I will ever have in my life.

Easy, because Matt and I decided straight away they needed to know and we needed to be completely honest with them because, if we broke their trust, they then wouldn’t believe us when we did tell them, that mummy was going to be ok.

Devastatingly hard, because whilst I had already cried over the possibility of missing them graduate, get married and grow old, I had to be cool, calm and collected so they hurt the least amount possible.

Mix 102.3’s Ali Clarke revealing to listeners that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Picture: Supplied

In the end of course, in the simplistic, unfettered way of young kids, they cried, asked questions that mainly related to them, and with a day of us snuggling under the doona and watching movies of their choice, they got back on track, although they do seem to hold my hand a bit more and ask if I’m ok at unexpected times.

So then, it was on to the actual beating of this thing.

Appointments, waiting rooms and so, so, so many scans.

If I knew so many people in Adelaide were going to see my boobs I wouldn’t have worried about dying my hair.

Unfortunately, it was the last of those, a breast MRI, that found the other tumours.

That meant my surgeon telling me instead of a relatively simple lumpectomy, she would have to take my whole boob.

Up until then, the scariest sentence that had stuck with me was ‘I’ll try to save your nipple’.

Yes thank you, please try very hard for that to happen.

But now, she was telling me I was going to lose the entire thing?

Now, instead of heading home for the waiting spaghetti Bolognese and family dinner, we were straight into meeting another surgeon who would run us through different options of what I might want to replace it with … or not.

Let me tell you, there is nothing quite like seeing your future sex life laid out on a wood veneer desk in the shape of silicon blobs, what looked like the inside of a deflated Sherrin and ‘After-photos’ which frankly didn’t look enough like the boob I was about to lose, to stop me crying.

I felt so foolish about all the years I had spent worrying about my weight, what I wore and more recently my wrinkles.

What a f**king privilege I had wasted in an inconsequential battle with how bad I thought I looked.

Ali Clarke in hospital after her breast cancer surgery. Picture: Instagram

Why hadn’t I had sex more often with the lights on or wore a bikini with more abandon because frankly I couldn’t – and still can’t – see me ever enjoying my body in the same way again.

The irony is, that with all of this happening inside my head the physical bit, the surgery, seemed like a piece of cake.

I’ve never been scared of that stuff and I find comfort in the expertise of medicine and science so the actual doing, the taking back of a little control by cutting this shit out of me, was a relative walk in the park.

So too was the recovery.

When I looked down I had a bump, and I took heart from the kids and Matt being unfazed when they looked at me.

I still haven’t actually seen myself properly, I still have tape whilst the stiches do their job, but if I’m honest when I look in the mirror I look past it and focus on my eyes or the top right bump of my collarbone.

I know actually seeing myself is important - just as important in my healing as the tissues mending.

It’s something I will do, but not just yet because there were, and are, more decisions to be made.

I am undoubtably lucky in that they got it all and I don’t need radiotherapy.

I am undoubtedly unlucky in that they found a heap more spots in the tissure they removed, almost like the cancer was ‘seeding’, and they didn’t show up on their scans.

Bang. Back in to fear and loathing with the obvious question being, well what the hell is going on in my other breast?

Simply for me, it will go, so whilst I am recovering well from this first op, I know there is still a lot ahead of me and all the while I’m being pumped full of drugs to stop my body producing the estrogen which grew these tumours.

Daily tablets, and an injection every 28 days which has sent me into snap menopause.

Oh, the irony that all of this started because I thought I might be starting the perimenopause.

It feels like the worst board game of life ever.

Skipping straight to go and paying way more than $200 for the displeasure.

When I asked the docs how long I have to stay on this stuff, the answer came back in ‘years’ so now I’m treading carefully as I work through what that means for my body and mind.

If I’m “lucky” I’ll have a vagina with the humidity of the Sahara and some aches and pains, but what’s more confronting is the emotional and mental side of it.

I think because I’ve returned to work, people think I’m ok and I’m back to my usual way of working which with passionately, fervently driving forward and finding the fun in it all.

What they probably don’t know is that I’m doing it out of desperation to return to some sort of normal, all the while in a brain fog that means I’m forgetting words mid-sentence and scrambling to try and cover it.

That’s a challenge when my job is to talk on the radio just as it would be confronting for those in board rooms, whilst serving people, counting numbers or caring for others.

To be clear, I know so, so many women would be going through all this and more, and this is part of why I’m so uncomfortable writing this, talking about it and above all, allowing myself to be photographed with it.

I don’t want to be the face of breast cancer, nor do I want to pretend that I have this worse than others.

Simply, I don’t, and if I’ve learnt one thing, every women’s fight with this disease is so bespoke that she, and only she, can make the decisions that are right for her.

Far be it for any of us to question and compare that to others.

People have called me brave and I f**king hate it. I viscerally recoil.

I’m not brave, I’m just hanging on.

I’m working and seeing friends, because that at least forces me to be somewhere, to do something.

Otherwise, on some days the only thing that would get me out of bed is that I don’t want my kids to keep coming home from school to find me in bed.

I don’t want them to say one day when they look back on their childhood, that mum was always sad and tired.

I’ll need help with this, and I’m seeking it, but in the meantime, a friend of mine called me the other day and she got tested because she heard of my diagnosis.

She’s just had a double mastectomy and they’ve found it elsewhere in her body.

What she is about to go through is everything that is brave, but as one of the newest members of this awful club, all I can say that most days, we want to freedom to not have to be.

And here’s the real rub of it all: How can I be true to myself and grieve what I have lost, when I know some people don’t survive this disease?

It’s a tragic uppercut that knocks you out of your feelings, but at the same time, I know I still have to somehow acknowledge and deal with mine, yet there’s not a day that goes by, that I don’t feel guilty for doing it.

So, for me – and remembering everyone is different – I will use this platform I have if it means one more person will get themselves tested, one more dollar might find its way to research or support or if it brings comfort to someone who has gone through it and left with none, some, one or two boobs.

For what it’s worth, I see you, and you are perfect.

Follow Ali on Instagram @aliclarkemix1023