Rose Fleig is an amateur baker and a breast cancer survivor. This is Rose is telling her story, in her own words.
By Rose Fleig
Baking is my creative outlet because you can do stuff completely different, every time.
My family’s Italian. Growing up, my Mum would make sugar coated peanuts, Italian biscuits, amaretti and biscotti, stuff like that.
We don’t have a family history of breast cancer so when I felt tenderness and soreness on one side of my chest, I reassured myself that maybe it’s nothing.
Then I went to a kid’s party with my son and heard that a mum had just died of breast cancer.
It really shocked me and I thought I better get checked.
When I told my GP the whole outer quadrant felt like cement, he straight away gave me a referral to have a mammogram and ultrasound. Then after those results a biopsy was done.
When I returned to my GP, he said, “Oh, the report says invasive carcinoma and metastatic carcinoma,” but I didn’t know that meant cancer so I asked him, what does this mean?
Maybe it was new to him or maybe it’s just a bit awkward when you have to tell someone… he didn’t want to say the words, ‘you have cancer’. He said, ‘It’s not what we hoped for’.
They found two lesions, one in the breast and one in the nearby lymph node.
Coming to a place like the Breast Cancer Institute, you don’t have that awkwardness about it, they’re confident to tell you.
You have to hear those words to understand, okay, my life’s about to change and this is going to get full on.
I got diagnosed in October 2023.
I was 33 at the time, my sons were 5 and 8.
You think, how do we tell the kids and how are they going to react?
I didn’t want them to overhear it on the phone but it got to the point where I was about to go through chemotherapy and lose all my hair.
To my surprise it was a huge relief when we told them, it really wasn’t a big deal but it was a huge weight lifted off our shoulders.
When my hair started falling out, we got the clippers and did it with them so they were part of it.
It was difficult to keep up with all the school stuff and housework, my husband helped so much. So did my eldest brother by taking me to so many medical appointments once my husband ran out of work leave.
After the first chemo, I tried to push through to make the Christmas stall cookies for the kid’s school. I managed to do 100 of them, but I didn’t feel well enough to stand at the stall.
When I was going through treatment, my youngest son would write these little notes, ‘I hope you get rest, Mama.’
He wrote these little restore cards with the cutest pictures, because he’d seen me lying in bed, exhausted.
The AC chemo was really hard because you lose your sense of taste and stuff starts tasting really weird, even water.
I like baking. I like eating something sweet as a nice little treat, but I’d eat one think this tastes horrible.
I just felt so depressed because I lost all the enjoyment out of food.
You don’t know what to eat, because it either makes you feel nauseous or burns your mouth ulcers.
When I changed to the Taxol chemo, it got a bit easier, and then eventually I could start tasting some food again.
Once that kind of passed, I’ve been making a bit more of an effort to incorporate more fruit, more vegetables.
You don’t realize that eating food and just enjoying the taste of it, is something you take it for granted.
Bit by bit, I got back into baking.
On my last day of radiation, the radiation nurses asked, ‘What music do you want us to play? It’s your last day!’
I said ’90s dance music’ which really made it feel like I was celebrating the end of my 15 rounds. During my port removal surgery I got to request the music again, so I said ‘Kylie!’
Kylie Minogue has been such an inspiration having also been diagnosed with breast cancer in her 30s and seeing what she’s achieved since then.
Watching her documentary White Diamond which shows her breast cancer journey, while going through treatment myself, felt healing to me.
Looking at the big cherry blossom display on the ceiling of the radiation room made my experience so much better than looking at a white ceiling.
I was told the centre had bought that display as well as the lovely new robes we wore during radiation treatment with the Dry July funds from last year.
If I can raise money to help them do something to make the experience a bit more comfortable with other people going through treatment, then I definitely want to do something.
Rose’s baking was featured at this year’s Dry July cake stall, and find her on Instagram at @rose_flake
Donate to the Westmead Hospital – The Crown Princess Mary Cancer Centre – Dry July 2025 here.