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Three women in the study were pregnant when they were diagnosed, an experience which was profoundly difficult for the young women. As discussed in the literature review, this is an under-researched phenomenon unique to young women. The accounts of the three women

Chapter Six – Findings – Embodiment

in this study who were diagnosed while pregnant – Catherine, Dawn, and Lyndsey – revealed that this was a further dimension of the embodied experience of breast cancer for young women.

Lyndsey described having to undergo a painful tissue biopsy, which was made difficult because breast tissue becomes denser during pregnancy.

“They were struggling to get the biopsy needle in, so she was like putting loads of weight on me and everything like really straining to get this probe into me. And she took three biopsies, and by the second one I actually said ‘I’m really sorry you’re gonna have to stop’, because I felt really nauseous and horrible, I felt like I was gonna faint.” – Lyndsey

She described how she felt upon hearing she had cancer and would need treatment while pregnant:

“My main concern obviously was the baby because I was like crazy about it at that point, it was wriggling around all over the place and I couldn’t keep my hands off it.” – Lyndsey

She then underwent a lumpectomy under general anaesthetic, and recalled her immediate response upon waking up from the surgery.

“I had my hands on my tummy as soon as I woke up, I remember coming round from the anaesthetic…I put my hands on my tummy and almost immediately felt the baby kick so I was like ‘Thank goodness for that’.” – Lyndsey

Chapter Six – Findings – Embodiment

Lyndsey’s account illustrates that her breast cancer diagnosis had implications for not only her body, but also her unborn child’s, and she was able to be reassured that her baby had survived through the bodily experience of feeling it move.

I asked all women about the long-term impact of treatment on their bodies, and the women who were pregnant at diagnosis felt that it was difficult to tell whether the changes which they experienced were as a result of treatment or the pregnancy.

“It’s really difficult because having a baby at the same time as having the treatment, your body changes massively through having a baby.” – Catherine

This illustrates that being pregnant at diagnosis increased the dissonance which the young women experienced between the expectations and realities of their bodies after breast cancer.

The data here is limited because of the small numbers of women interviewed who were pregnant during diagnosis. However, I have been able to identify important themes for wider exploration, and illustrated the impact of such an event on the embodied experience of the young women.

Conclusion

The findings in this chapter have provided evidence that women were at odds with their bodies in a number of key ways. Firstly, the young women experienced and perceived their bodies to be a source of danger, inherently risky. This was related to the nature of cancer and its apparent duplicitous ability to be hiding with the body, and the inability of medical knowledge to define them as cancer-free. It was also, importantly, related to their age at diagnosis because of the nature of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, and the many decades ahead during which cancer could recur. Further, the sense of their bodies as risky

Chapter Six – Findings – Embodiment

impacted on young women’s interactions with others. These findings provide insight into young women’s perspectives of CPM, as well as extending knowledge about embodied risk, developing its age-related dimensions. Risk of recurrence was not a prominent theme in all of the interviews, and exploring these accounts highlighted the significance of women’s experiential knowledge, and chemotherapy, in understanding their perceptions about recurrence.

The second major finding was that young women encountered a gap between their own and others’ expectations of their bodies, and the reality. This was a result of the effects of treatment-induced menopause, the impact on sensation and physicality and subsequent consequences for their everyday lives, and the effect on their sexual desire and experiences. Asking women to talk about how their bodies felt after treatment revealed important insights into the impact on sensation, but also the ways that sensation and appearance were

interwoven in women’s lives. A number of the ongoing effects of treatment were

experienced by the women as premature ageing, and bodily reminders, and revealing what had happened to them in situations in which the women wished to forget.

Finally, this chapter explored the accounts of the three women who were diagnosed during pregnancy. This analysis illustrated that the diagnosis held implications not only for the young women’s bodies, but also of their child’s. It also showed that it was difficult for the women to distinguish whether the changes to their bodies were as a result of treatment, or the pregnancy. Although there is a limited amount of data due to the small numbers, the accounts demonstrate the profoundly distressing impact of this under-researched experience.

The next chapter addresses the question of the extent to which biographical disruption characterised the young women’s experiences and perceptions.

Chapter Seven – Findings – Biographical disruption

Chapter Seven – The significance of