V Weekend: ‘I feel humbled every day’: Beloved breast surgeon hangs up her scrubs after 50 years

Dr Jenny Senior, one of Melbourne's most experienced breast surgeons, who treated pop star Kylie Minogue 20 years ago, is hanging up the scalpel, having saved the lives of countless women.

Dr Jenny Senior for V weekend. Picture: Wayne Taylor

A young Jenny Senior would ride her bike past the paddock that had been earmarked for Moorabbin Hospital in the 1960s.

Even at the age of four she had known that she wanted to be a doctor.

And after decades at the forefront of breast surgery and saving the lives of hundreds – if not thousands – of Australian women, Senior is officially hanging up her scrubs for one last time.

Her brother Simon had always wanted to play football, but all Jenny had wanted was to study, slowly but surely just as Moorabbin Hospital was constructed on that spot not far from her bayside home.

“I always wanted to be a doctor. I don’t know why,” Senior tells V Weekend at Cabrini hospital.

“My brother would say, ‘Jenny, you’re just always in your room studying.’ He was out playing footy. I was the student, and my brother was the footballer.

“It was all I did. And they just supported me and let me do it because that’s what I was always going to do.”

Having studied medicine at Monash, Senior – who was awarded an OAM in 2023 for her service to medicine – then trained at Prince Henry Hospital.

She could never have fathomed spending more than 50 years in medicine and becoming one of Melbourne’s most eminent breast care professionals.

Dr Jenny Senior at Cabrini hospital. Picture: Wayne Taylor

“I was very lucky at Prince Henry’s where I did my training. The professor was a man called Vernon Marshall – he had two brothers who were doctors and his sister was a doctor.

“He didn’t care whether you were a man or a woman. He didn’t mind.

“We had this extraordinary female surgeon Dame Joyce(Joyce Daws) who was a mentor. One of the most important things she said – as I come to my retirement – when I was 28 or 29, was that she was going to retire at 60, ‘so that no one can say I stayed too long’.

“And I think as a young doctor – coming to my retirement – it’s actually really helpful to think that you have to think about when your use-by date may be.”

Only 16 per cent of the surgeon workforce is female.

“We don’t really know why women don’t want to be surgeons … it is a life balance thing, but now you can have maternity leave and we’ve got registrars now who can take time off their training,” Senior, a self-confessed “total workaholic”, says.

“It’s still low so we do need mentors to really help us achieve what we achieve.”

Dame Joyce told her early on that “the sooner you tell your family you won’t make birthdays, you won’t make this or that, the better”. “Because you just won’t. That was a choice I made,” she says.

Those in her care have remained number one – right until her last case, Melbourne’s Carlie Merenda.

And her passion for her craft has never waned.

Dr Senior at Cabrini hospital with plastic surgeon Mr Simon Overstall. Picture: Chris Hopkins

“Because I feel humbled every day,” Senior says. “You see everyone navigate their path and the number of times I say to colleagues, ‘we are just privileged with what we get told and how women get through adversity’. Like Carlie.

“I like to see my patients for 10 years. Sometimes, someone is coming in for appointment number seven and you think it’s a quick 10-minute one. And some catastrophe has happened in their life and they share it with you, and you’re forever learning about how people deal with adversity.

“I am just humbled by what people do. Absolutely humbled. That’s what keeps me going. And it’s the bit I’m going to miss.”

Senior’s office is adorned in AFL and Rafael Nadal memorabilia and she’s across the latest in footy contracts and tribunals, which she reckons helps many blokes feel at ease, too, when they attend nervous appointments with their partners.

She’d often be at the hospital at 8 o’clock on Friday nights, the women in her care always so thankful that she was. “A lot of others won’t be.”

Somewhat poignantly, as she officially moves out of surgery, this month marks exactly 20 years since Senior’s most highlighted case – that of Melbourne’s wildly successful international popstar Kylie Minogue, who has also paid tribute to her surgeon.

“It goes to show that she’s wonderful, it’s been 20 years and she’s really inspired a lot of women to get treatment,” Senior recalls of Minogue’s 2005 diagnosis and surgery.

“I remember the morning I was rung by her GP who said, ‘Could you see her?’ and I said, ‘Fine.’ I met her here and she was absolutely glorious. She did everything we asked.”

There was paparazzi to encounter, attempted security breaches and an afternoon post-surgery press conference – Senior’s only media, until now – in front of local and international media.

But Senior’s only focus was her job at hand – as with all of her patients.

Dr Senior reads statement to media outside Cabrini Hospital in Melbourne where she advised that singer Kylie Minogue was likely to make a full recovery. Picture: Supplied

“Cabrini was sensational. Kylie just got on with it, which was just brilliant,” she says.

“The morning after I saw her when she made the announcement (about her diagnosis) because she was about to do her tour, I was operating with another surgeon in the city, and everyone in theatre was saying ‘Who do you reckon is going to see Kylie?’

“I said nothing, and said, ‘who do you think she should see?’ Thank God I was on the shortlist!

“She got (from me) exactly what I always do (with my patients). Nothing changed.”

Minogue, now 56 and on tour in the UK having been first diagnosed on May 17, 2005, and undergoing a lumpectomy four days later, had chemotherapy in Paris and was eventually declared cancer-free and has remained so.

She spoke in 2023 of how her cancer experience “will live in me”, and told VWeekend this week that her treatment with Senior had been second to none.

“I witnessed, first hand, Jenny’s dedication to her work and her patients,” Minogue says.

“Her level of care and empathy always present, and helping people through very difficult times.”

There was no VIP treatment from Senior for Minogue. That’s the way she is – it’s all heart, for everyone.

Kylie Minogue performs during her 'On a Night Like This' tour before she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005. Picture: Dean Lewins

It was March 1, 2021 when Merenda first met Senior in an appointment no woman wishes to ever make.

More familiar with footy than radiologist films, after more than 20 years in talent management for some of the biggest names in the AFL, Merenda found a lump in her right breast that a mammogram later revealed was irregular.

From there, it was go time.

A call within days from her GP told her, “I’ve booked you in for Jenny Senior – she’ll call you shortly.”

“I had no idea who she was. I was in a whirlwind of tears and emotions and Jenny rang and said come in,” an emotional Merenda recalls.

“I brought in a friend with me and in one of the most devastating times of your life … I really believe in energy being everything, so the way people show up is so important. Jenny came bounding out and there was just this immediate sense of ‘Wow, she’s got this under control.’

“The confidence, the care, the ‘ask any question’. People really do come into your life for a reason.”

Her cancer was found early, was small and slow-growing.

If there was ever a patient Senior thought she would never see again, it was Carlie Merenda.

“I’m so healthy. I don’t drink. I eat so well. I exercise, meditate, I really look after myself,” Merenda says.

“So at 41 to have been feeling so well and to have found the tiniest of lumps very early, through self-breast examination, and then having it successfully removed, Jenny was like, ‘If there’s someone I’m not going to see with cancer again, it will be you.’

Dr Senior with Carlie Merenda who was operated on by Jenny last month in her own cancer battle. Picture: Wayne Taylor

“I had a couple of years of being cancer-free and my right breast is still cancer-free, but last year there were some spots in my left breast and I just … couldn’t believe it.”

Close friend and former AFL superstar Ben Cousins joined her at a 2024 appointment, and “asked great questions”, Senior laughs, and noted her calming nature within minutes. That was dealt with in March of that year but it was earlier this year that something just didn’t feel right.

There was no lump, but Merenda just knewsomething was off and brought her now-annual breast scan forward.

Cancer was back, and Senior was straight to the 2024 tests to ensure nothing had been missed.

“Hand on heart, we can say that,” Senior says.

“At Cabrini, we have good radiologists and they’re there to talk to. When you’re dealing with someone who’s going through this, you have to be able to look them in the eye and be able to say ‘I know it wasn’t there.’”

An MRI followed and then an ultrasound was to come with the results to be phoned through.

“The next minute, she turns up in the ultrasound room,” Merenda says.

The next day, Senior rang to make sure Merenda was OK. There was a lot to consider, with a mastectomy and reconstruction of her left breast to eventually follow in March of this year.

“Everyone’s a VIP with Jenny,” Merenda says through tears.

“The care that comes every step of the way – you absolutely meet people for a reason in life and I have to believe that everything is happening for me in this journey.

“I would not have made the decision to have the mastectomy without Jenny … the care, the patience, the complete trust of her support of you when you’re facing something so sad and have incredibly difficult life-changing decisions to make.”

Senior hadn’t operated for a year – since Merenda’s last surgery.

But she assembled her team and got to work.

Carlie Merenda and Dr Senior together five days post her surgery, when she came to tell her that her pathology results were good. Picture: Supplied

“And how lucky am I? She’s meant to be retired but she’s doing my surgery,” Merenda says. “She’s just a very special person in the way that she can communicate and listen and really meet everyone where they’re at.

“I look at life in a very holistic way.

“Silver linings have happened almost every step of this journey, especially with Jenny, but also in my life as a whole during this time.

“Even through my darkest days the things that happened made me trust that things were happening in my life to get me on another path for a more beautiful future. I was on a path receiving some warning signs that I was trying to bury for a while.

“Once you make that decision, you just want to get it done. There is something very special about Jenny – the care she has, the trust you have immediately in her and her incredible work. I know women who have had Jenny, and everyone says the same thing.

“If Jenny wasn’t doing the surgery, I don’t know how I would have (done it). You never once questioned her. She was on your team and she has the best team and treated you like you were just ‘it’. I’m just so incredibly grateful for Jenny showing up in the most difficult time of my life. She is one of those people who touches lives in ways she may never fully know.”

Dr Senior came out of retirement to perform Carlie Merenda surgery. Picture: Wayne Taylor

There’s no sailing off into retirement for themuch-loved surgeon.

There’ll be a holiday with her partner, who Senior says has long been far too understanding of her addiction to her work, then a return to BreastScreen – a national government program that provides free breast cancer screening mammograms, primarily targeting women over 50.

“Which is still giving back, because you have registrars from the hospital who do radiology … they sit in and see how you communicate with the women,” Senior says.

“I am still able to now teach the communication, and just staying in touch (with it all) is really important. It’ll be full circle – I started off learning there, and then will end up finishing at BreastScreen.

“We all have to take bits with us from everyone, like I did from Dame Joyce. We all need them, in the end.

“I’m so looking forward to that.”

If nothing else, Senior – who affirms that an “incredible” team remains at Cabrini hospital in particular – wants Australian women to hear one thing.

“If they have a lump, and if their doctor is dismissive of them, they have to follow it up,” she stresses.

“That’s the most simple thing. If you’ve got a lump, you’ve got to get seen. And if you can have a free mammogram from (the age of) 50, you’ve got to.

“Australian cancer statistics tell us the breast cancer five-year survival rate improved from 79 per cent in 1991-1995 to 92 per cent in 2016-2020. It’s unbelievably good.

“Younger women, in my experience, are the ones who have been dismissed. When they’ve gone in with a lump, or a bit of pain, they’re often fobbed off by their GP, or fobbed off by the people doing the ultrasound saying, ‘Why are you here?’.”

She highlights that the cancer incident rate per 100,000 women aged 40-49 has risen since 2000.

“Women under 50 have to pay more attention. (Age) 30-39 was not much of a jump, but the message is women under 50 … they really need to be mindful because that has gone up.

“The death rate, on the other hand, is really coming down. They’re not to be scared.”

Originally published as V Weekend: ‘I feel humbled every day’: Beloved breast surgeon hangs up her scrubs after 50 years