My life was too busy to have cancer.

That is what I thought as I sat with other women in a medical waiting room dressed in identical blue hospital gowns.

I had found a lump in my left breast three weeks earlier while leaning over my suitcase on the first day of a long-awaited family holiday and had immediately thought, “Oh sh**”.

I silently fretted about it until I got back to Perth, determined not to ruin the holiday.

The GP had examined it and immediately booked a mammogram, ultrasound and fine-needle biopsy for the following day.

As I sat in the waiting room I busied myself with the family’s Google calendar — a multicoloured algorithm that gets us through each week of work, childcare, swimming lessons, sport, birthday parties, endless school events and appointments.

There was no w

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