Christine’s Breast Cancer Story

This interview has been edited for clarity. This is not medical advice. Please consult your healthcare provider for treatment decisions.

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Career as a model

I was raised in Saint Louis, Missouri, and I started modeling there when I was 11 years old. I really had to kind of push my parents to allow me to get into that space. They weren’t the ones that wanted me in it. 

When I turned 16 and I was able to drive myself to jobs, I was very independent. I missed a lot of school, but I was a very good student, so I would bring my backpack and my homework on photo shoots. While they were doing my hair and my makeup, I was studying. 

I ended up doing well in the modeling space for many, many years. Ultimately, I stopped modeling when I was diagnosed with cancer. Of course, I didn’t think I would ever go back to it, but I ended up going back for a different reason. 

I really loved the modeling space. Of course, it has different issues within the industry. Some of them permeated into my own life. I dealt with an eating disorder when I was quite young. But as a whole, modeling to me felt very safe because I’d been in that industry for so long. 

Modeling with a concave chest

There’s women that need to see this. Women need to see somebody with a concave chest in the largest runway show in the world. That matters. Ultimately, several designers hired me, and I put on high heels for about a month prior to the shows because I needed to get my legs well versed in wearing heels again and also very high heels.

It was a very interesting process for me, and I showed it all over social media. People were rooting me on to completely figure out my walk. I did some YouTube tutorials and figured out how to do it. I ended up walking gracefully and beautifully in these shows, and it had a big impact. 

Ultimately, I’ve walked in three seasons since then, including Miami Swim Week — which made a big splash, no pun intended — but it did make a big splash, because again, I was 50 years old and a concave chest walking in the largest swim show runway show in the world. 

That took a lot of courage and bravery, but I felt like I had it inside of me and people, again, needed to see that. That’s a little bit of the history of my modeling career and why I continue to do it.

Receiving the breast cancer diagnosis

Ultimately, five days later, I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. The ironic part — well, there are so many ironic parts, which sometimes you have to think about the irony in things and think, “Maybe there’s purpose to this.” 

For me, I was diagnosed on October 1st, which is the first day of breast cancer [month]. Instead of looking at it as now I’m going to be tortured for the whole month, seeing it all over the media and NFL and the pink socks and the pink this, I thought, “There must be a reason for me to be diagnosed on the 1st.” 

The other thing is I wasn’t able to digest the fact that I just had a fused arm, and now I was facing chemotherapy, which had to be postponed for 30 days. If they had started the chemotherapy, the cadaver graft in my arm would have dissolved. 

I thought, “This is some sick joke, right? I have cancer. Now I can’t even treat it.” That started a whole new level of duress into my psyche, into my emotional state.

»MORE: Patients share how they processed a cancer diagnosis

I was facing a ginormous amount of distress and changes in my life and a lot of questions whether I was going to live or die. Again, I had young kids. 

For the next 15 months of chemotherapy, I spent a lot of time doing a lot of introspective work and saying to myself, “If you do get out of this, if the outcome comes to your survival, then let’s not try to survive. Let’s try to thrive. And what does that mean? What does that look like?” 

Sharing your story of hope

My book is becoming a film, and one of the reasons why I’m so thrilled about that [is] not because it’s my story. Whether it’s a book or a movie, so often we see the protagonist or the main character die. Let’s say “Philadelphia,” the movie with Tom Hanks, or “Steel Magnolias.” 

Take your pick. There’s a lot of illness movies out there that have been very successful movies, but typically the protagonist dies. When I was first approached about having my book made into a film, I said, “This will be different for the movie industry because I’m alive and I’m thriving. Wouldn’t that be a nice story to have?”

Of course, if it’s a film, it’s a bigger audience of hope. That’s what I’m trying to do. You always get criticized, of course, if you have a big platform. But people say to me, “Do you want a bigger platform?” Of course. I have such a beautiful story of hope; I have a light in the world. I have a voice, and I’m going to use it. 

But I’m not just going to say, “This is the good part. This is a success. I don’t really care about the highlight reel. I care about the whole reel.” That’s what people are attracted to about my story. I will tell you the mess I was in, and I will tell you the vulnerability and the despair I felt. 

I didn’t want to get stuck, and I didn’t want to get paralyzed in that. Ultimately, I didn’t run away, of course. Sometimes people don’t get out of that mess, and that’s why I think these types of stories are so powerful.

And he said, “And there are going to be moments where you and your friends and your family are going to think that I’m killing you or the chemo is killing you. It’s going to feel like that, but when you’re done, you’re going to be done because I don’t ever really want to see you again.” 

 If we take our hope away, we have nothing.

It was that kind of brash honesty, but also kindness, to say, “I don’t really want to see you around here anymore.” That really stuck with me. I thought, “Okay, I get it. I’m going to go through a lot of help. But if I can just survive this, I’m going to survive life. I’m going to be here to tell the story.” 

Survivorship and Thrivership

Having hope in the darkest moments

That gave me hope. I think when people are giving a diagnosis and say, “Go get your affairs in order,” that takes away hope. When hope is lost, what do we have? The bags and the gifts and the accolades from society and the success — that makes no difference. But if we take our hope away, we have nothing. 

He gave me hope, and so I stuck with that, even in the darkest moments. After my mastectomy and after 18 rounds of chemotherapy, I was able to get a mastectomy, and then I had more chemo, and then after my third revision of my mastectomy and after my faulty implant. 

I’m not saying it’s wrong, but people need to know that there are people out there going, “Are you doing okay?” Checking on them, right? Just a text. Doesn’t have to cost money. It doesn’t have to cost you your resources or your time. 

These are things that if caretakers hear the story, they go, “Oh, you know what? I’m going to text Susie today because I know she finished treatment a year ago, but I wonder how she’s doing.” 

As survivors or patients, we can teach the world how to care for the ones that come after us. That’s our responsibility, so I take that very seriously.

Surviving and thriving

Survivorship certainly looks different for everybody. How it’s impacted them is so different. You can have the exact same disease. You can have lung cancer, you can have breast cancer, or you can have a brain tumor. Everybody’s tumor is going to be different, everybody’s emotional impact is different, and their physical impact is different. 

One size does not fit all, which is why it’s important to have multiple stories and multiple points of view. When I talk about survivorship, it looks different for me. I don’t want to alienate people by saying, “This is how I’ve survived.” 

I try to teach people to survive. It doesn’t necessarily fit other people. I try to look at it as thriving. I try to look it as I haven’t just survived. I don’t want to just be a survivor. I want to be a thriver. 

What it means to be a thriver

For me, that looks like giving back to the community on all levels. If that costs me something, if that’d cost me some emotional distress by sharing my story, if that caused me some financial distress, that’s okay for me. 

Because I know that when I was diagnosed, I felt like I was alone. I felt like I was alone in the diagnosis. I felt like I was alone in the journey. Not because I didn’t have friends and family there. I did. But again, if you don’t have contemporaries that have gone through it, you don’t really know. 

For me, thriving is helping to give people hope because I’m living a story of hope, but also, again, talking about the pain and the complications and why it’s so important to have these conversations. 

I also talked to breast cancer survivors who will say to me, “Today was the day of my diagnosis two years ago, and I can’t get out of bed.” Surviving is ultimately getting out of bed. You don’t have to do anything but just try to get out of bed, and that’s enough. 

Teaching grace

I think one of the most important things that we collectively can do as survivors and as a community of people trying to help cancer patients is to try to teach grace. Take baby steps. Give yourself enough grace today to get through the day, even if it looks bad. 

Give yourself enough grace today to forgive yourself if you’re angry, to forgive yourself if you’re mistrusting of doctors. That’s okay. When we give ourselves the grace and we show grace and we teach grace, that ultimately builds up our courage. 

If I get mad at myself and say, “I shouldn’t have been rude to that nurse.” Okay, I’m having a bad day, and if I’m rude to the nurse, I can certainly go back and apologize to that nurse and say, “I’m sorry. This is my issue, not yours.” That’s grace. We all make mistakes like that, and that’s okay. 

If you give yourself the grace, then you’re giving yourself the courage, and then you’re building your self-esteem, and then you’ve got your feet on the ground, and now you’re on level ground. Now you’re not staying in bed. 

Survivorship looks different, but if we talk about it and we give each other grace, I think that’s a really good talking point, and that’s where we should start.

Not being afraid anymore

In the beginning, I was like, “I can’t let this go. I need to know if I’m going to live.” But when I practiced it day after day after day after day, I finally said, “Okay, it’s out of my hands. I cannot control whether I’m going to live or die. I cannot control whether I’m going to get cancer back. So why am I fixated on this fear?” 

I had to figure that out inside, and once I figured it out, I let it go. I don’t ever think about getting it back. People ask me that all the time in interviews. They’re like, “How often are you afraid?” I’m not afraid. The reason is I let go of the outcome. I’m fixated on faith. My measure is not of this world, and that’s how I live my life.

Did you work on that internally or get help from someone?

That I figured out on my own. Although I was showing people courage, I was super mad inside. I thought, “Wow, this is a really double standard because I’m showing people that I’m hopeful, I’m nice to the nurses, and I’m nice to my friends when they show up.” 

I was mad, and I was questioning my faith. I was questioning my life. Why was a model? Why do I feel sad that I lost my beauty? Why was that important to me? Why am I so fixated on the fear? Why am I so worried about getting through this and getting in the future? 

I really had to come up with a plan for me. In the beginning, somebody said to me, “People are watching you. Be very careful how you show this journey.” And that really stuck with me. Those are two issues. The outcome is one issue, but also showing courage and showing compassion and showing grace for myself. 

Needing self-esteem to be a self-advocate

Going back to the medical field, in order to be an advocate for yourself, you have to have a strong self-esteem. I didn’t have a strong self-esteem, so I wasn’t advocating for myself. You walk into these appointments, and you’re diagnosed with cancer, so you’re totally vulnerable.

It’s for profit, and you know that chemo is expensive. You have to say to yourself, “I have to ask hard questions.” I would absolutely tell people to bring somebody with you because half the time you don’t remember what they say because it’s so much. It’s so overwhelming. And take notes. 

Viewing cancer as a season of life

When I was diagnosed, I thought, “It was so overwhelming. This is going to go on forever.” It’s just so much. I’m always going to have this now. I’m never going to be who I was before. 

I felt like I was changed forever. Looking back, it was a season of my life. If we can look at it as a season of your life, it looks very different. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so overwhelmed because I would have been like, “Okay, it’s a season. If I can get through this season, then there’s another season. Not all seasons are bad. There’s going to be a good season coming.” 

In the beginning of COVID, people would ask me all the time, “How am I going to get through this?” I’d say, “Like I did in chemo. It was a season of my life, and now this is a different season. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. When it’s over, there’s a different season.” 

If you can just compartmentalize it like that, it’s less overwhelming. It’s less grandiose; it’s less big. All we can do is today. We can’t do tomorrow. We can’t do next year. Doing those types of things keeps us present and not afraid. 

If you think about the magnitude of 28 rounds of chemo, and I’m on number one and focused on 28 — how am I going to get 28? All that does is promote anxiety and fear and a low self-esteem. 

If I was going to number one, I’d say, “I gotta get through number one. I gotta get through today, and we’ll worry about next week’s next week.” That’s not easy to do, but if you keep reminding yourself this is a season, that will help you get there.

Here’s the problem with that. That’s a label. I’m basically signing a label of me having a mastectomy, which it’s not true. 

Anyway, that’s a side note. I’m being wheeled back, and I have no idea what the outcome is going to be. I have no idea that my whole chest is about to be excavated. They don’t know what’s going to happen inside. They don’t know how big the infection is. 

I come out of surgery. The next morning, the doctors come in. They’re about to take off the dressings on my chest, and they say, “Do you want to look at it?” Of course, we all have masks on. Again, it’s June of 2020, right after COVID started. 

I don’t really want to show them how afraid I was, and so I say to them, “I don’t want to see it until I’m with somebody that I love.” I didn’t want them to unveil what I was about to experience probably for the rest of my life without somebody’s courage that I could borrow. 

I needed my mother’s courage. I needed my father’s courage. I needed my son’s courage. I didn’t have any courage right then. It was a very lonely and depleting stage of my life. When I talk about courage, I’m not saying that I always have the courage, even with a strong self-esteem. But what I’m saying is it’s okay to borrow from other people and even use that language. 

Just say, “Hey, Mom, I need to borrow some courage right now because I have nothing left.” I think it’s so important when you go through trauma and duress to remember it’s not all just on you. There are people out there that will lend you their courage.

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