I, Mutant

How breast cancer altered my identity

- NATALIE SOYSA

2 June 2020

What does chemo feel like?

Possession. Demons. Voices in your head.

It is difficult to describe, but being possessed comes closest to the feeling. A giant hand inside you, weighing you down. Whispering when you close your eyes. A lucid dream of something inside you that did not belong there. And it hurts like a bitch.

WHEN MY FATHER PASSED AWAY, in 2016, I made grandiose promises to myself. One of them was that chemo would never enter my bloodstream. If cancer came for me it could have me. Watching him disintegrate was hard. I blamed the drugs as much as the disease. Since my father was diagnosed with and eventually died of lung cancer in his late sixties, this was the manner and age I expected it to happen to me too.

In May 2020, in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. By June, I had undergone a battery of tests and started the first of an eight-cycle chemotherapy regimen that would leave me questioning my own sanity as much as my gender. In October, I lost both my breasts, some muscle, and several lymph nodes. As I write this, in December, I am about to begin a 15-day cycle of radiation. I am wondering how much more this year can do before it is done.