A Survivor Learns to Appreciate Her Changing Body
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Alisi Jack Kaufusi, 30, a human resources professional in Brisbane, Australia, has gone through a lot of ups and downs with her body image. In 2017 at the age of 24, Jack Kaufusi was diagnosed at stage 3 with a rare and particularly difficult to treat combination of two different ovarian cancer subtypes: low-grade serous and high-grade serous.
She underwent intense treatment that involved chemotherapy and major surgery, which included a full hysterectomy and partial bowel resection. Jack Kaufusi completed treatment and went into remission at the end of 2018, but she has since faced two recurrences and disease progression.
While Jack Kaufusi has experienced many changes to her body as a result of the cancer and ensuing treatment, her body image challenges actually started long before her diagnosis — and she only came to accept and love her body after being diagnosed. Growing up Polynesian, in an area where there weren’t a lot of Pacific Islanders, Jack Kaufusi was often teased about her appearance.
“In primary school, [people would say], ‘You’ve got big lips,’ or ‘You’ve got a big nose,’” she recalls.
As she got older, she says she’d try to eat healthy and go to the gym to attain the “ideal” body type portrayed in the media. “I wanted that slim stomach and slim waist,” Jack Kaufusi says. “I wanted to fit in, I wanted to feel like that. But I struggled. I was always quite insecure.”
Physical Changes During Cancer Treatment
Previously, when her mother had gone through treatment for breast cancer, Jack Kaufusi had shaved her head in solidarity. Because she’d experienced being bald before, losing the hair on her head during chemotherapy didn’t bother her. What did upset her was losing her eyebrows. “I felt like that was my identity,” she says. “I had so much pride in my eyebrows.”
Another change she found upsetting was the weight loss she experienced during chemotherapy. “People would say, ‘You look sick,’ or, ‘You look like you have cancer,’” Jack Kaufusi says. “I struggled through that — looking sick, looking how I felt.”
Learning to Love Her Body
A big turning point for Jack Kaufusi came in 2019. While in remission after completing her first round of ovarian cancer treatment, she took a solo trip to Miami, Florida. Due to a combination of insecurity and Polynesian cultural norms, she’d never worn a bikini before. “In my culture [Pacific Island/Tongan], wearing swimsuits isn’t very popular. Growing up, it was always shorts and a T-shirt. For us, I guess it was respect — not showing much skin,” she says.
But on her trip, Jack Kaufusi took the plunge. “I saw the women around me, and the environment, and everyone was just doing their own thing. No one cared what you wore,” she says. “And I was like, ‘You know what? Stuff it, I’m going to wear a bikini!’”
“It felt exhilarating,” she recalls of the experience. “It felt empowering — to be able to just feel comfortable in my own skin.”
Walking around in a bikini, she was asked about the visible scars on her abdomen from her ovarian cancer surgery, and felt proud of them and what they represented: everything she’d been through and overcome with her ovarian cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Another positive turning point for Jack Kaufusi came the following year, in 2020, when she was exercising regularly and reaching her personal bests with weight-lifting. “I looked in the mirror and I really loved my body,” she says. “And I was so thankful for it because it had been through so much — surgery, chemo — [and] it was able to accomplish those [fitness] goals.”
Coping After Recurrence
When she was diagnosed with her first recurrence later that year in 2020, and was no longer able to exercise as frequently, Jack Kaufusi’s self-esteem around her body image took a hit.
“I struggled with gaining weight from the steroids, and also losing muscle mass,” she recalls. “I didn’t feel as confident when I looked in the mirror. I just saw ‘ovarian cancer’ and not the [self] that I knew.”
The fluctuations in her weight and ongoing changes with her appearance have led Jack Kaufusi to an important realization: “I’ve gone through this for years and some [chemotherapy regimens] make you look ‘sick’ and some don’t. [If] you’ve got no eyebrows and no hair, and you’ve lost weight and your skin’s pale, then people go, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s really sick.’ [But if you] … still have hair and look good, [people think], ‘She looks okay, she must be doing okay,’’’ she says.
When people have made assumptions about Jack Kaufusi’s health based on her physical appearance, though they were probably well-intentioned, it’s made her feel dismissed, and like her experiences weren’t being acknowledged.
“Cancer doesn’t actually have an ‘image,’” she says. “There’s a misinterpretation. Just because I don’t look like [how cancer is portrayed] in the movies, doesn’t mean I’m not sick. Just because I look well … doesn’t mean I feel [well].”
Another Turning Point
After Jack Kaufusi’s first recurrence, she signed up for a self-confidence and modeling workshop hosted by Country Girl Management (CGM), which involved getting a professional photo shoot.
“Doing that workshop really empowered me,” she says. Jack Kaufusi was interviewed by CGM about her experiences taking the workshop in a video, where she shares what it was like to see her photos from the photo shoot that day: “I had a moment — it just gave me that boost,” she says in the video. “Like, ‘Wow, this is how I look.’ But I didn’t see that within myself.”
Accepting Changes as They Come
Since her second recurrence in 2021, Jack Kaufusi’s disease has progressed to stage 4 terminal ovarian cancer and she is currently in ongoing treatment. Beyond appreciating her body for how it looks and what it can do, Jack Kaufusi has learned to accept the ongoing changes.
“My body has changed; [it’s] not the same [as it was] precancer,” she says. This means that physical tasks that used to come easily, like walking up a flight of stairs, can now require more time and effort. “But that’s okay,” she adds, especially considering everything she’s been through.
Jack Kaufusi’s advice for others experiencing body image challenges after a cancer diagnosis is the same thing she tells herself: “Remember that you’ve gone through so much, and your body has endured so much,” she says. “Just be patient, and be kind to yourself.”
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