Guardian Me­dia pho­tog­ra­ph­er NICOLE DRAY­TON shares her breast can­cer jour­ney with WE mag­a­zine.

Now, if you know any­thing about me, you’d know I love the Christ­mas sea­son—the at­mos­phere, the vi­su­als, parang singing, the scent of ham bak­ing in the oven. Need­less to say, 2024 was go­ing to be a dif­fer­ent Christ­mas. As I pon­dered the way for­ward, we had moved from the stage of won­der­ing to one of con­fir­ma­tion.

One thing I must say—the amount of sup­port I re­ceived from my fam­i­ly mem­bers, both here and abroad, was so over­whelm­ing that I didn’t even have time to be sad. And of course, my dar­ling An­na-Lisa Paul had me spend Christ­mas with her fam­i­ly, and I brought in the New Year in the South­land with Na­tal­ie Year­wood and her crew. I was grate­ful for the dis­trac­tion.

With all the fes­tiv­i­ties over, it was back to my new re­al­i­ty: fight­ing this myth­i­cal crea­ture.

Once I found the lump on No­vem­ber 10, my en­tire YouTube al­go­rithm changed. I start­ed do­ing more re­search on breast can­cer, and that jour­nal­ist’s in­tu­ition kicked in. Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from Breast­Cancer.org, one in eight women in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca will be di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer in their life­time.

Ge­og­ra­phy didn’t mat­ter—there I was in Trinidad and To­ba­go, me, Nicole Dray­ton, now count­ed among them: a can­cer sta­tis­tic

I spent hours each night be­fore bed and while get­ting ready for work study­ing how this can­cer might af­fect my body.

In ear­ly Jan­u­ary 2025, I joined the Breast Can­cer Clin­ic at the St James Med­ical Com­plex, where I met a new team of doc­tors.

I got to the clin­ic at 7 am on a bright Mon­day, dropped my card in the box, and was greet­ed in the wait­ing area by over 50 women—and a few men—there with their moth­ers, wives, daugh­ters. All races. All ages. All bond­ed by one word: Can­cer.

Be­ing a new pa­tient, I had to wait for my name to be called. As I sat ob­serv­ing this new space, I watched women wait­ing along­side me. Some dressed for work, some eat­ing break­fast, some rock­ing side to side in their seats, some stretch­ing, some tak­ing bath­room breaks—oth­ers light­ing up with joy when their names were called. I, too, wait­ed—thank­ful for the free Wi-Fi that dis­tract­ed me from my thoughts.

When my name was fi­nal­ly called, the doc­tor apol­o­gised for the wait. He ex­plained they had been see­ing a lot of new pa­tients like me. He read the re­port from the Can­cer So­ci­ety and con­firmed: Stage 1, Grade 3 ag­gres­sive breast can­cer.

We be­gan talk­ing about the course of ac­tion. He sug­gest­ed a lumpec­to­my to re­move the can­cer and sur­round­ing area in the right breast, fol­lowed by ra­di­a­tion once I’d healed.

But I didn’t want just part of the breast gone. I want­ed the whole breast re­moved—and as a mat­ter of fact, take both! My log­ic, based on the re­search I’d done: this mon­ster had in­fect­ed my right breast, and I wasn’t about to sit around wait­ing to see if it would come for my left. An­oth­er thing—I re­fused to have my par­ents bury me. I was go­ing to fight, with God’s help, to beat this.

He was sur­prised by my de­ci­sion, but I stood firm—I ad­vo­cat­ed for my­self. And with that, we planned a dou­ble mas­tec­to­my.

Some peo­ple didn’t un­der­stand why I made that choice. But I’m in the fight of my life—and that B!#€/ wasn’t go­ing to win.

My breasts don’t de­fine me. I’m a woman be­cause I was born fe­male—and that won’t change.

Fast for­ward to ear­ly Feb­ru­ary. I went to Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for lab work—blood tests, a CT scan, and an ECG. That last Sun­day I worked, I got home around 10:30 pm, turned on the TV and jumped on YouTube. What popped up was the Su­per Bowl half-time show fea­tur­ing Kendrick Lamar. Lis­ten to me—I watched that per­for­mance over and over. I love his mu­sic—songs like HUM­BLE, All the Stars, and DNA. As Kendrick beefed with Drake, I was beef­ing with can­cer. One song that be­came my an­them was Eu­pho­ria. There’s a line in it that says:

“Have you ever played, have you ever—okay let’s play.

Have you ever watched your en­e­my down like with a pok­er face?”

That be­came my bat­tle cry to en­ter the Gayelle with can­cer.

Then came the meet­ing with Ms Brafit CEO Nicole Joseph-Chin for my mas­tec­to­my bra fit­ting. That meet­ing turned out to be much more than just a fit­ting. Nicole gave me the space to vent—to re­al­ly talk about the process. It was heal­ing.

With all the tests com­plet­ed, it was now a mat­ter of wait­ing for the surgery, sched­uled for March 11.

I was thank­ful for work that kept me busy—it was peak Car­ni­val sea­son.

I got some time off to pre­pare for surgery. More heart­felt mes­sages came pour­ing in from my Face­book fam­i­ly, co-work­ers—Caris­sa, Vashti, Mari­am, Tasha, To­va, De­bra—and oth­ers who mes­saged and checked in. Then there were Cher­ry Ann, Shel­don, An­na-Lisa, Ar­lene, Sparkle, Kar­lene, Maris­sa—friends who prayed with me, took me to church, gave me rides to get food—any­thing to ease the wor­ry.

But even with all the sup­port, the re­al­i­ty of the ap­proach­ing surgery kept me on my toes. Still, my faith in God nev­er wa­vered.

One of the down­sides of be­ing a sin­gle woman shows up at times like this—with that lin­ger­ing ques­tion: Who’s go­ing to take care of me af­ter surgery?

That played on my mind a lot—my vil­lage all had their own fam­i­lies to see about. But God al­ways qui­ets the storm.

En­ter Michelle O’Ke­effe, founder of Em­brac­ing All Re­al Sur­vivors (EARS)—some­one I could call 24/7. She would lis­ten to my fears and help set­tle my thoughts. She told me, “Nick, you can heal at home. Just make sure some­one’s there to help in the be­gin­ning.” And yes—my mom came to the res­cue.

Then came a beau­ti­ful sur­prise—my old­er cousin Charmine Mar­shall, who’s like a big sis­ter to me, came for Car­ni­val and spent time with me. I cher­ish those mem­o­ries deeply.

In my qui­et mo­ments, I re­alised what stand­ing on busi­ness re­al­ly meant for me. It isn’t about weak­ness or feel­ing sor­ry for my­self. It’s about own­ing my sto­ry and fight­ing for my fu­ture, even when the path is scary and un­cer­tain. It means mak­ing choic­es that pro­tect my life and my spir­it, no mat­ter what any­one else thinks. This jour­ney is mine, and I’m de­ter­mined to walk it with courage and grace.

March 10 ar­rived. The nerves start­ed to show. I fin­ished pack­ing my bag and took one last bath at home—with my breasts. I thought of the jour­ney I was about to start.

As I got dressed, my ex Neil—though we had bro­ken up a year ear­li­er—came by to pick me up. We re­mained friend­ly. He ar­rived around 5:45 pm. I said good­bye to my home, and off we went—to the St James Clin­ic.

I stayed overnight, with surgery sched­uled for the fol­low­ing day.

To be con­tin­ued