In the weeks before I took my 11-year-old daughter to Taylor Swift’s Eras concert in Toronto, things started to go wrong, logistically. Our Airbnb host canceled on us, and I scrambled in a sea of expensive options to find a backup. Then, I realized that my daughter’s passport had expired. You need a passport to fly to Canada. Underneath my stress—and my annoyance that something that was supposed to be fun had become stressful—I began to feel shame.
One month after I completed chemotherapy for Stage 3 breast cancer, and two weeks after I underwent a double mastectomy, I sat in bed, my surgical wounds itchy, my morale at an all-time low.
“I would pay $1,000 if I could have any real amount of hair right now,” I told my husband. He nodded, politely understanding, but his eyes widened. We owed a colossal sum on our taxes. I was on medical leave from my job. We were not exactly flush.
This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.In February, two months before my 40th birthday, my left breast became swollen and painful. I chalked it up to the catchall pile of indignities known as perimenopause. But March and April came and went, and my breast seemed worse. May arrived, and I scrambled to schedule a mammogram.