'Why I take my children with me to my breast check appointments'

Some mother and daughter duos have their bonding time over ice cream or long walks.

That’s all very cool, but lately I’m finding my eldest daughter and I are having some of our very best conversations while I’ve got my bare breast in a mammography machine like it’s no big deal.

“What is it you were saying about the choir rehearsal, darling?” I’ll ask as a stranger manipulates my breast and flattens it like a pancake before I do some of my very best acting, pretending like it’s not killing me when it really damn well is.

My daughter, in turn, tries not to look alarmed or concerned.

That idea stings a hell of a lot more than the actual mammograms and biopsies.

My own mother was diagnosed with breast cancer while I was doing my HSC. I should have known it was coming – after all, her mother had lost a breast to cancer and my grandmother’s sisters had died from it – but the news hit me hard. I grew up in a time when the C word was closely linked to the D word and ever dramatic, I was sure my mother was going to die.

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Every machine beep terrified me that year, every scan, every groan from my mother, every sudden movement where her hand would fly to her body as though searching for a new growth.

Pre-internet, any information we had came from stern-looking medical professionals who did little to quash my fears that my mother would soon be taken from me.

Things got worse when those stern-looking professionals took a sudden interest in me, the last cancer-free female in our family - a sitting duck, if you will.

Life since has meant ultrasounds twice a year, enough biopsies to feel like a pin cushion, a fair share of cancer scares and more recently, mammograms a couple of times a year as well.

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Life with breast cancer looming in the background has taken some getting used to, but I’m no longer afraid of hearing, “I’m sorry, Ms Yasa, but…” When it comes, I know I’ve been proactive enough to catch it early and I’ll deal with it the best I can.

Do my girls share my genetic legacy? I’m not sure, but I’m guessing probably at this point. We’ll cross that bridge when they get to their teenage years, but in the meantime I’m working hard to ensure they don’t see breast cancer as something to be afraid of, if they understand what it means to be proactive.

If I were to quote a line from the movie Point Break (and what’s a cancer article without a Point Break reference?), “Fear causes hesitation and hesitation can cause your worst fears to come true.”

My message? Keep checking, keep talking and remember that you’ve got this. C does not have to be linked with D, and I learned this the hard way.