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how brooke gordon chose to show up through breast cancer treatment
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brooke gordon made a power move on her cancer. before chemotherapy, she went to her hairdresser and had her head shaved.
she wanted to lose her hair on her own terms, with her mom, sister and a good friend watching by her side. because taking a stand for herself means something big when life feels out of control.
it all started when she was on holiday for a much-needed vacation from her numerous roles as an entrepreneur and business coach based in ontario.
“as i was getting dressed, i looked down and had the complete shock of realizing my nipple was facing the wrong direction. that was the very first really obvious sign that something wasn’t okay,” she says. at first, she thought it could be an infection. the pain started a couple days later.
“that’s when the lump really made itself known. although i was a regular advocate and practitioner of self-exams, it was directly behind my nipple, so that’s why i was unable to find it.”
she was 45 at the time and wouldn’t have had access to regular screenings, although the age for screening has now lowered.
panic, shock and choosing curiosity over fear
“panic set in when i felt the lump and i immediately went to start booking time with my doctor.”
was there an earlier sign that something could be wrong?
although she didn’t recognize it for what it was, the darker tissue around the nipple had started to have a bit of a teardrop shape. she chalked it up to perimenopause, when the body starts changing.
“i thought, ‘oh, well, it must just be part of getting old,’ and so it never occurred to me that that was my body signalling that there was something wrong in that area. and then later, the actual texture of the skin started to change. something called the peau d’orange, or the skin of an orange, because it literally looks like little divots and dents, the same way the outside of a clementine might. and so that was now the symbol that became more obvious later and one that we monitor for.”
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brooke wants to share her story to create awareness of breast cancer’s possible symptoms, advocate for early screening and let people know that there is life to look forward to on the other side of treatment.
“as i’ve come through this journey, i have learned more and more that hearing the stories of the women who went before me is important. it’s knowing that there is another side to the treatment, knowing that however you might be feeling or looking or perceived in that moment, there is another side.”
she readily admits the diagnosis of breast cancer is a shock and the journey is fraught with uncertainty. she’d always been a health-conscious, healthy person, preferring to cook her own food and do a lot of walking.
when she connected with her family doctor, she was referred for an ultrasound at a hospital where they could proceed with a biopsy if needed, which is what happened.
“it was my first mammogram. it’s not a comfortable process by any means. none of it was, but they were so caring. and that really made a difference for me. i brought my mom with me. and when she left the room, when they did the biopsy, the first thing i asked was, ‘so now that she’s not in the room, tell me the full story.’ and it was okay, if it is positive, here’s what’s going to happen. and sure enough, they were spot on.”
the best piece of advice at that point—which she is keen to let others know—was to get a notebook and write down all the questions that she had. every medical professional that she worked with had a lane, so they may not have the answer to a specific question, but she could save the question for someone else. “having it all written down where you can go back over your meeting notes was enormously helpful.”
she and her husband met with the general surgeon, a woman with a specialty in breast cancer, to discuss the biopsy results, and were braced for the news. her breast cancer was “on the cusp of stage 1 and 2” because it had spread slightly.
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treatment started with chemotherapy because the tumour was so large, almost the size of a kinder egg, which was upsetting because she hadn’t noticed it earlier. she was told it was extremely fast-growing.
“it still amazes me that there’s so many types of breast cancer and women that i know and women that i met, we all have a different type. i actually ended up with two types, what they call triple-positive, so both the estrogen-dominant and her2-positive. and then during the surgery, when they analyzed all the tissue that they removed, we found out that there was a second cancer in the same spot, which was a different type.”
surgeries, radiation and more chemo
she had a second surgery to make sure all the affected tissue was removed and her lymph nodes after the surgery were clear—a huge relief for the way forward to recovery.
next came radiation on weekdays, with the weekends to rest and recover. then came more chemotherapy and immunotherapy, which lasted several months longer. sometimes treatment needs adjusting, and brooke stopped tolerating the new chemotherapy she was on, with her nerve pain getting progressively worse. she reached a point where she was unable to walk even with pain medication support.
that part of the treatment was stopped, and she completed her therapy by halloween of 2025.
since then, she says it has been a slow journey of learning how to keep mobility and movement on her left side. the lymph nodes on her left side were removed, so the fluid builds up, and it’s harder for her body to move it out. she’s adopted techniques like massage and a compression sleeve to help prevent fluid buildup.
the thing about cancer, any cancer, is that it can come back. so it becomes a life-long concern where monitoring and self-care are critical.
finding community in cancer
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what matters most in the cancer journey comes down to “how we show up,” brooke says. for her, that meant taking the opportunity to develop relationships and get to know all the health-care providers and peers in what she describes as a deeply caring community. also, especially in the early stages of treatment, she chose curiosity over fear.
“whenever i had a fear about something, there was a question that was driving that fear, and that question went into the notebook. and i intentionally sought the answers so that i could turn that fear into action,” she adds. “who can help me find the right answer? at a minimum, that question was always available to me.”
brooke also made the most of all the appointments and waiting for those appointments by spending much of that time with her mom.
“there’s a lot of waiting. and i got to do that with my mom. and we packed colouring books and books. and sometimes i was just too tired to participate, but we always had the loveliest time. and we found the joy,” she says.
“there’s a lot of emotions, and i wasn’t joyful for the whole thing, but finding those moments where, with the emotions that you have, making conscious choices of how you want to feel and then finding ways to put yourself there. so whether it’s curiosity, whether it’s joy, whether it’s admiration and gratitude, it’s finding those feelings.”
she’s recovered from the nerve pain in her hands, but her feet haven’t fared as well, and she’s learned she’s reaching the limit of possible healing. walking is the best thing that she can do, so she aims to walk every day. gradually reducing drug therapy became a goal because of the impact on her cognitive clarity and her energy, and she was tired all the time. she had to balance managing pain with improving her mental clarity.
“i knew that if i was going to go back into my professional work, i needed to work on bringing that [dosage] down. so that happened over quite a few months of gently, slowly weaning myself off the drugs. now i take them in the evenings to help me sleep.”
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she was recently
nominated for a mentorship awardfor her work empowering other women to achieve their goals in business leadership, so she’s come out the other side of treatment with a lot of joy.
and does she still have her notebook?
“i most certainly do,” she laughs. “i had a doctor’s appointment today because i’m now in a whole new phase of trying to figure out what this looks like, and insurance papers and all kinds of things that go with that. and sure enough, the notebook absolutely came with me and all my instructions for figuring out your way to transition from how you are feeling to how you want to feel.”
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