Sorry Elle, there was no ‘holistic’ way to treat my mum’s cancer

Elle hath no fury like a cancer survivor saved by gruelling conventional therapy, only to be told by a celebrity that it might not have been necessary. Macpherson needs to take a leaf out of Kate Middleton’s book.

My mother, brother and I pictured a decade before her diagnosis.

“The Body has lost a fan for life,” my mother declared after supermodel Elle Macpherson told the world she went against the advice of 32 doctors by refusing chemotherapy for her breast cancer diagnosis.

I was in a training bra when I learnt my mother was diagnosed with HERT 2 breast cancer, the same type as Macpherson’s, and while it took only one oncologist to convince Mum that she would need to undergo chemotherapy, the decision was not easy.

Survivors, patients and the people around them that bear witness to the horrific process of treatment understand the desperation of seeking out a way - any way - to avoid that dreaded needle of chilling fluids. Chemo is a tough, paradoxical therapy, pumped deep into the body for hours on end, while nurses clad in thick protective vests pass around lollipops and icy poles to subdue the rising nausea and dwindling morale.

Macpherson’s now-infamous 60 Minutes interview, which ranges from self-indulgent statements on her “intuitive, heart-led, holistic approach” to cancer healing and “fear” making people ill, to the self-serving promotion of her own new book, now stands in stark and ugly contrast to the video released overnight by the Princess of Wales announcing the conclusion of her own chemotherapy treatment.

One woman has used her platform to promote the delusion that an aggressively growing tumour can be beaten with prayer and meditation – packaged neatly beside her WelleCo products for sale.

The other leverages her immense fame to tell of the power that comes after the pain of gruelling medical treatments. With vulnerable honesty, the future queen offers real hope that every family affected by cancer clings to after diagnosis.

My mother, a hairdresser to her friends, was known for her signature flowing, honey-dyed locks. Shaving her head down to the scalp - jagged lines of bare flesh poking through as it fell to the floor, both of us crying - was a painful ritual that is endured by so many chemo recipients.

We knew, after her lumpectomy, that she would be stripped down to her bare self, conflicted by the fact that this was what the beginning of healing looked like.

Mum and I, right: ‘It’s interviews like Elle’s that make cancer patients feel so confused and so alone,’ she says.

I’d come home from school after a day of lessons I could barely focus on, parental forms left forgotten and unsigned between medical appointments. I would hold Mum up as she mustered every fibre of strength just to drop me off to class in the morning, after which she’d collapse in pain for the rest of the day. With the edge of my school dress, I’d blot the smallest paper cut that would no longer clot, so decimated was her health.

It’s a grim reality that reflects TV veteran Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s angry rejoinder to Macpherson – no matter how awful the cocktail of chemo, radio and hormone therapy rejected by the supermodel, “someone is going to die” by following her example.

“I understand Elle … did what she thought was good for her personally, but the very fact she has resisted any other medical treatment … absolutely terrifies me,“ Kennerley told The Australian.

“Think of the poor oncologists, surgeons and doctors today … inundated with phone calls from people (saying) ‘I’m rethinking my treatment because Elle Macpherson said this and that’.

In a post-Covid era where scepticism of medical science has reached feverish new heights, such insidious claims can influence people, especially those at their most vulnerable. Not those few who can afford an eight-month stay at an Arizona holistic health centre, but those without the means to take time off work or from their role as primary carer to spend months throwing up into a toilet bowl, weakened, underweight and enduring the kind of fatigue that makes you question whether you’ve ever known sleep at all.

Graduation day, a decade into remission.

Social media provides a megaphone, not only for stories of hope in the case of Princess Kate, but tales that muddy long-held truths about combatting this common killer. As summer approaches and sun-safe messages rise with the temperature, and as Australians of the Year Richard Scolyer and Georgina Long prepare to pass the baton while continuing to explore new treatments for cancer, a message like Macpherson’s sets us back. We must not allow facts to be replaced with an unattainable alternative, no matter who is grandstanding it.

“It’s interviews like Elle’s that make cancer patients feel so confused and so alone,” my mother said this week. This woman I watched being pulverised by months of treatment took each grievous turn with humour. After the tears had dried at her newly bald head, she laughed: “at least I have a perfect skull”.

Years on from her diagnosis, she has attended each McGrath Breast Cancer fundraiser, sporting a hot pink outfit to personally introduce herself to the Prime Minister and advocate for awareness.

My mother pictured at a McGrath Foundation event beside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

These are the moments reflected in the closing tableau of Kate’s video, a portrait of hope and joy, a family walking towards its next chapter, as the Princess narrates: “To all those who continue their own cancer journey: I remain with you, side by side, hand-in-hand, out of darkness can come light.”

More than a decade into remission, my mother still attends chemotherapy appointments. There she holds the hand of the next patient enduring the process to remind them that hair grows back, and the hellish side effects are only temporary.