“A glamor photo saved my life”

Kelly Reichardt was looking at pictures taken of her by a photographer friend in 2020 when she suddenly noticed an odd shape on her left breast. The mother-of-one looked at the picture of herself standing sideways and observed what appeared to be “shaky flesh.”

It turned out to be breast cancer and Kelly’s keen eye may have saved her life, but it came with a confusing twist – nine years earlier the West Auckland woman had undergone a mastectomy to remove both of her breasts.

“My girlfriend did a glamorous photoshoot to make women feel better and I agreed, although I’m very critical when I look at myself in photos,” recalls Kelly, 40, who had a preventive double mastectomy she’s wearing Mutation of the BRCA2 gene, putting her at much higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.

“The average person wouldn’t notice, but I thought my chest looked weird.

Until then, Kelly didn’t think she needed to examine herself as she had no breast tissue left. She was shocked to feel a large, “firm but squishy” lump under her left nipple.

“I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that it was cancer,” says Kelly, a single mom to daughter Molly, 12. “That photo saved my life! I told my mom who had breast cancer, then I was heartbroken for the rest of the night.”

After losing several family members to breast cancer, Kelly called her doctor the next day and was given an urgent appointment at North Shore Hospital. As she sat waiting for an ultrasound, she wondered how the cancer had entered her life despite her surgery in 2013.

“After my daughter was born, I decided to do genetic testing to see if I was BRCA2 positive because my mother is,” she recalls. “When it was confirmed it was bittersweet because it sucks to have it,
but it’s also good to know. I was on a surveillance program, which meant I had mammograms and ultrasounds every six months.”

Each time, they discovered lumps of fat in Kelly’s breasts that needed biopsy, and after three years she had had enough. She requested a preventative double mastectomy and surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes. She retained her nipples and had breast reconstruction with implants.

“I blocked out all emotions because I knew it had to be done for my health and to be there for Molly,” says Kelly. “When I woke up after the procedure I was relieved because I thought it was over. I returned to normal life as a housewife.”

However, two years ago, Kelly discovered that she is in the 1% of people who develop breast cancer after a preventive mastectomy. It turned out that the cancer had grown in her nipple.

“It was devastating to be diagnosed after doing all this work to try to prevent it,” she says. “They told me that keeping my nipples wouldn’t be a problem. If I had the opportunity to let her go, I would have taken her.”

Because her cancer was growing rapidly and had already spread to her lymph nodes, Kelly required a lumpectomy. The surgeons eventually removed more than 20 lymph nodes, including the one with cancer, and agreed to remove her nipples.

“I had nine rounds of chemotherapy and then radiation, which was tough,” says Kelly, who has an art degree and runs her own studio. “During the treatment I wrote poems and short stories and created digital picture collages.

“I have now created a book with this material. It kind of saved me because I needed all that creativity to get out. It was cathartic.”

When Kelly was cancer-free, she began 10 years of hormone treatment and she now has yearly ultrasounds. She recently had surgery to remove her breast implants, which had become “rock hard.”

“I found lumps all over my right breast and kept wondering if it wasn’t more cancer, but the scans showed it was just parts of the implant that had shifted. It was like my body had had enough and was fighting it until one ruptured on the right.”

Kelly admits saying goodbye to her breasts was a long and traumatic journey, but she’s grateful the cancer was caught early. She has already started teaching her daughter self-control and is excited that Molly will be able to do genetic testing for BRCA2 when she turns 18.

“It’s important that women don’t get complacent,” says Kelly. “I’ve been open throughout my cancer journey, posting online and educating people about how to check their breasts. Five of my friends did it and found lumps. Today I appreciate my body and the beauty of life much more because I know it’s possible. I went very differently.”