Tracy Whybrow & Derrin Stent

We moved from London to Sydney in late 2012. In 2014, a couple of months after Tracy had made a complex career step and one week after the chaos of moving into a newly bought home, an old uni friend phoned to say she had a breast lump and was spreading the word to all and sundry: CHECK YOUR BOOBS!

Tracy always had lumpy, painful boobs. With all that was going on, though, she'd had no time to prioritise getting them checked. Fortunately, she made a GP appointment straightaway - and so Tracy's breast cancer saga began.

Our boys were 6 and 4 then. The little one was blissfully accepting about mummy T being absolutely fine - just that her medicine was so awesome it made her hair fall out and feel tired.

It was trickier to assuage our older son. He was much more aware of the connotations of the c-words - cancer and chemo - as my dad, his treasured Pop, was going through treatment for mesothelioma at the time.

So, when I was diagnosed ten years later, it was terrible sitting down with our boys, now aged 17 and 14, to say we had to go through it all again.

At least we could hold up Tracy as living proof of successful treatment.

There were advantages to having been through it all before. For example, it's common in Australia to choose your own specialists. Tracy's breast surgeon and oncologist were both deeply-caring, super diligent, brilliant women so there was no question we'd choose the same team for me. We are so grateful and adoring of them both.

It didn't mean Tracy and I had identical experiences, though, as we're quite different personalities (and patients) for starters. Our diagnoses were a decade apart so treatments, family dynamics, work pressures and friend networks were all dissimilar.

I think the biggest difference was that Tracy was one of the first women in our extended network to experience breast cancer. It felt shocking and devastating. By the time I got it, it was much easier to think, yep, shit happens. Go through it. Move on.

Both being fit, healthy, relatively young at diagnosis (Tracy 50, me 58) with low risk-factors, it's tempting to speculate what we might have done to cause it. Our obsession with fresh tuna in the 90s? Tupperware in the dishwasher? Not having biological children (Tracy) or having them later in life (me)?

When we ask the professionals, of course they shrug. The day my GP confirmed my diagnosis, she told me her GP friends call cancer diagnosis 'sniper alley'. It seems pretty unlucky we both got hit.