Some people are born ambassadors.
Take Carolyn Choate, 58, for instance. She lost her right breast to cancer in 2003 and was told she had three years to live. She had her other breast purposely removed nine years later. She’s hiking around Denmark later this month, portraying herself as Beowulf fighting a metaphorical monster, breast cancer in place of Grendel, to benefit the New Hampshire Breast Cancer Coalition, raising money so patients can afford everyday things, like food and rent.
And she doesn’t care that you know she has no breasts, oftentimes opting to move through her day without a prosthetic bra. In fact, she’s feeling quite sexy these days.
“I don’t feel any less desirable than any other woman,” said Choate, a local TV talk-show personality in Nashua. “I don’t care what others think of me. It matters what I think of me, and I feel great about myself.”
For Choate, a perfect world would include a cure for breast cancer. Meanwhile, she’s here to remind you about the importance of mammograms, getting a second opinion and to always, always be mindful that your mind and spirit, not your breasts, make the woman.
Easier said than done, especially in this looks-obsessed culture, but Choate has evolved into a walking billboard for higher levels of thought. As she told me, “This is me. What’s not to love?”
People around Concord have reason to love her, since the majority of patients served by the NH Breast Cancer Coalition live around here.
I sat with Choate Wednesday outside in the heat. No longer bald from chemotherapy, she has short, silver hair, swept to the side, and her passion to help others through awareness and fund raising could not be hidden behind really dark sunglasses.
“I represent every woman who’s had breast cancer,” she proclaimed, “whether they’ve defeated it or not.”
She defeated it. In fact, she spit in its eye, after a golf-ball sized tumor was removed near her right breast. The cancer had spread to four lymph nodes. She was told not to expect to see her two daughters, then 9 and 12, finish high school.
“I was too numb to cry at the time,” Choate said. “I was shell shocked.”
Her older daughter, Sydney, kept her sadness and fear locked up tight.
“You think you know your children,” Choate said. “But she was putting on a stiff upper lip for me. Give her an Oscar for that. She was hurting far more deeply than I knew.”
Choate’s younger daughter, MacKenzie, coped by using humor (Now 23, she wants to be a professional comedian).
“Being 9, it was really hard to understand what was going on,” MacKenzie said. “We would have our own sense of humor. We would joke that she had no hair, and when she lost one of her breasts, we said she could get a part-time job at Hooters.”
Fast forward to 2012, long after her fingernails and toenails had blackened or fallen out, after her hair had fallen out, and after the prognosis had been proven wrong . Choate was forever dogged by tests to make sure the cancer had not returned to her other breast. Anxiety remained part of her life.
This is where Choate’s own humor surfaced during our interview. Choate said she was big breasted, a D cup, and wanted nothing to do with reconstructive surgery or a bra that would give the illusion of a second breast.
She called herself a “Cyclops, with a third eye, this third wheel, this one large breast.”
So she had a second mastectomy in 2012, saying a constant source of stress had left her body, along with that breast.
She went to Greece by herself in 2014, fueled by her love for great literature, in this case Homer’s Odyssey. She had been on her own journey for so long, like Odysseus, and wanted to bring a feminine character to a classic tale of courage and perseverance.
“It bothered me that all the great western epics were from a male perspective,” Choate said.
She backpacked for 10 days, calling it “flatpacking” because of her chest. She searched for a sense of self, her feminine qualities that had nothing to do with those D cups, and her independent spirit that had everything to do with who she had become.
“I felt strong and accomplished,” she said.
She had her picture taken with snow-white buildings and the deep blue Aegean Sea in the background, her arms spread to the side like triumphant wings, her chest out front with no hint of embarrassment or shame.
She leaves July 24 for Denmark, where Beowulf’s bravery was documented in an 8th century Old English poem, written by anonymous monks. She’ll walk 28 miles, from Copenhagen to Lejre, to raise money, using a Go Fund Me page in hopes of one day giving $10,000 to the NH Breast Cancer Coalition. She’s paying for the trip herself.
The coalition was founded in 1992 and has a separate wing that gives money to patient support services.
“It’s a project she has found to be near and dear to her heart,” said Nancy Ryan, president of the coalition.
When asked to describe Choate, Ryan said, “She’s channeling her energy to help other women. She comes up with ideas we never would have thought of. She took us off guard when she called and told us about this one.”
Choate will call herself Shewulf in Denmark, hoping to one day slay the monster so that others can live in peace. “At the end I’ll take the train back to Copenhagen,” Choate said, “to meet the U.S. ambassador to Denmark.”
His name is Ruffus Gifford.
He’ll meet an ambassador, too.