This Sunday night’s episode of 60 Minutes looks set to provide a stunningly up-close look at Roxy Jacenko’s breast cancer battle, even taking viewers right inside the operating theatre.
A new preview for the programme contains intimate footage of the Sweaty Betty PR founder being wheeled into surgery, as well as some of the operation itself.
Jacenko was diagnosed with the disease in July, after her five-year-old daughter Pixie noticed a lump in her left breast.
“She felt it, because I didn’t know what it was,” Jacenko says in the preview.
“I kept thinking at 40 is when you start worrying about breast cancer and so on, even if it’s in your family.”
Earlier this month, a source told The Daily Telegraph that Jacenko would undergo a "partial removal" of her tumour at one of Sydney's top hospitals.
While the details of her surgery remain unclear, the 60 Minutes preview shows surgeons extracting a mass from her breast, which one doctor describes as a "very centrally located cancer".
Listen: Rosie Waterland and Laura Brodnik discuss Roxy on The Binge podcast:
The 36-year-old was forced to break the news of her diagnosis to her husband Oliver Curtis over the phone, as he had recently been jailed for insider trading.
The timing of the devastating news lead critics to question the seriousness and even veracity of Jacenko's illness - cynicism which she hits back against in Sunday night's episode.
"It is what it is. I am the person who has got the cancer, my husband is in jail, and I'm now a single mother," she says in another preview released by Channel 9.
"I don't really give a fuck what they think on my timing."
Top Comments
As a 40 year old mother of three that has gone through Breast cancer I feel Roxy is somehow cheapening my experience. As a nurse I also question the ethics of the surgeon involved in her surgery. This is not about information it is about sensationalising a very intense and personal experience. She is profiting from the suffering that others feel.
Actually, she is! She still has the support of her husband, as I wrote, as he is still able to contribute to their upbringing through letters and phone calls just as an army or fifo working husband would. Army wives or wives of men who work away are not single mothers. Neither is Roxy.