"Why I wanted a tattoo on my mastectomy scar"

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Kris Hallenga

Kris Hallenga was diagnosed with end-stage bad cancer at the age of 23 years. On average, people who have been diagnosed live for two and a half years, but 10 years later, she wants people to know that it is possible to overcome the obstacles.

A tightrope artist walks along the line created by Kris Hallenga's mastectomy scar.

"I got tattooed maybe three years ago now, it's to represent the balance between any illness, life and all the rest," she says.

"I did not want to hide the scar, I just wanted it to be part of the artwork."

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Kris Hallenga

Kris never tried to hide or deny his condition. Instead, she adopted him as part of his life.

"What has happened can not really be changed, and I think that accepting better than accepting your situation is going to be much better than fighting something." That's why I do not consider not cancer in my body as an enemy, do not think it's particularly healthy, I think we need to work with it rather than against it. "

When she was diagnosed with advanced bad cancer in 2009, she decided not to get angry, but instead created a charity called CoppaFeel, to educate and encourage youth about the disease. to regularly check their bads.

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Kris Hallenga

Even before her diagnosis, she realized how fragile life was. She was shaken at age 15 by the death of a grandmother. Then, five years later, his father died.

"When I was diagnosed at 23, I was already aware of the mortality and we were not going to live forever," she says. "So, I think it helped me to adopt an attitude and deal with the reality of the situation."

On February 19th, 10 years will have pbaded since she learned that she had stage 4 bad cancer.

"Stage 1 cancers are very small and limited in size," says Dr. Duncan Wheatley, Kris' oncology consultant physician. "Stages two and three begin to spread to the lymph nodes around the bad, then to stage four, when it spreads from the outside of the bad to a distant place, that's where it is. acts of the liver, lungs, bones or brain. "

He says there are different degrees of stage four bad cancer, but that they are almost always incurable.

Kris's cancer had already spread to the pelvis, liver and hips and she also had a brain tumor.

"When I was diagnosed, I did not think I would die in two and a half years – that's statistically what you were told when you diagnosed stage four – but I did not think neither would I survive very long, I did not really have a calendar in my head. "

She says that no doctor has ever given her a personal prognosis, and she says she is happy about that, "because I think it would have really delayed me and I do not believe in those delays."

His own doctor, Duncan Wheatley, says that survival rates vary according to the biology of the disease – some cancers may behave much worse than others, even if they look alike. But there has also been scientific progress over the last 10 years, so many of the drugs given to Kris were not available at the time of the initial diagnosis.

"The treatment options are expanding," he says. "So [we can] treat bad cancer more as a chronic disease than as a disease that quickly kills you, in the same way that you treat high blood pressure and heart problems as a chronic disease that you will not get rid of, but that you can push people to continue. "

According to Macmillan Cancer Support, the bad cancer survival rate has increased over the last 40 years, thanks to improved treatments, increased awareness and faster diagnosis. In the 1970s, about five in ten women survived beyond five years after diagnosis, but now more than eight out of ten women do so.

The earlier the diagnosis, the better the chances of survival. Nine out of 10 women have more than five years of stage 1 bad cancer, compared to one in 10 women diagnosed with stage 4 bad cancer.

Patients like Kris, who are doing much better than expected, are often referred to as "long-term survivors".

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Kris Hallenga

It is written in the contracts of all CoppaFeel staff members that they take the day off every February 19th and ask them to make their lives so beautiful. It could be spending the day with the family or going to see an exhibition they wanted to see.

This year, Kris plans to organize a party with her friends and family.

"I'd like to look back over the past 10 years and laugh about all the nonsense we've done and all the important steps for the badociation, I think it'll be really fun," he said. she says.

She has changed a lot as a person in the last 10 years, but one thing has always stayed the same: her positivity.

"I was not a particularly confident person before the diagnosis, so I would not recognize the person that I was the day before my cancer, she is very strange to me now," says Kris, "but then It's been 10 years and I think you've changed a lot between the ages of 23 and 33, which is probably common for a lot of people.

"But I love what I am and what I have become and if it is the cancer that has done it, then too bad, I think it's okay."

Kris says her determination to educate young women has been "a key factor in why I'm still here."

"I think this goal and need to get out of bed – I mean, it sounds very bbad – but when you're sick, sometimes you do not feel like it."

She believes that the real results of her work will be visible only when the young women she encourages to control their bads begin to reach middle age.

The risk of developing bad cancer before the age of 30 is about 0.05%, or one in 2,000, which increases to one in 50 or 2% before age 50 years old. In the United Kingdom, one in three women diagnosed with bad cancer is over 70 years old. .

"When they get older and reach the age range when bad cancer is widespread, we will likely see the real impact of our work once the age of mammograms, because they will know if well their bads and will receive an early diagnosis. "

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Kris Hallenga

Although she left her post as CEO of CoppaFeel a few years ago, she still works for the charity part-time. She also moved from London to Cornwall, where she lives with her cat, to get close to her twin sister, Maren.

"I go for a walk on the beach once a day," she says. "I find it so much easier and better to be calm and thankful in this huge expanse and I love being outdoors." I like spending time with friends. I love to cook, j & rsquo; Love food, love all the good stuff, nothing crazy, my hobbies are not crazy, just love being alive.

"Just spend a day with my twin sister where we'll try a new coffee and take a walk then go home and watch a crappy tv – it's a cool day for me."

But she also sometimes continues to do things out of the ordinary. At the end of last year, for example, she participated in a video clip for the Little Mix girls group. The song, entitled Strip, promoted self-confidence in the female body and brought together inspiring women.

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Small mixture

"I had to choose what I wore and wanted my mastectomy tattoo to be visible," says Kris. "I wanted it to be obvious, I did not want to wear something with my prosthesis, no one said that I had to show that I had only one of them." only bad, but for me it was important that we did, if not what was the purpose of my participation in the video?

"There is a lot of pressure on women to be symmetrical, with or without cancer, and I have received messages from people since the video [saying]"Today, I left without my prosthesis, I just could not be [bothered] to wear it and I felt better about it, "so it was really cool."

Kris aspires to be like the tattoo artist on her tattoo, finding a stable balance between her life and her condition, but does not always succeed.

"I'm not always perfectly balanced and able to control everything at any time, especially when the cancer has decided to become active again, so I feel pretty bad," she says.

"But I guess what's erasing me once again is knowing that I've gone through difficult times and gone through it, I've already done so much in my life, I'm really pleased that I've done incredible things, so I think I can be very proud of it.And it's not me who die to death, it's me who simply say, "Well I do not have the pressure anymore. "

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Additional help and advice

NHS – Breast Cancer

Cancer Research UK

CoppaFeel

Breast cancer care

Macmillan Cancer Support

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Recently, Kris discovered that her cancer had progressed again and described herself as being "in limbo" for the treatment she may need.

"The other day, brain damage was neutralized by special radiation therapy," says Kris.

"These are amazing things, I've had a lot of them and my brain is now under control – my liver is not – so we're trying to figure out the next steps, but I do not want to rush n & rsquo; No matter what.

"I have not opened the chemotherapy closet for 10 years, so I may know it, but I take these decisions very seriously."

"I would have liked not to have met her that way," says Duncan Wheatley, "but it's a very inspiring person because of all that she's done and continues to make."

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