Tania Katan isn’t afraid to show off her scars when running marathons topless.
In a way, she feels more confident with herself showing the public the scars she received after undergoing a double mastectomy, a surgical removal of both breasts.
“People are looking at me in a loving way, a respectful way, a slightly confused way, but they’re looking,” Katan said. “They’re not scared of my scars — I’m not scared of my scars…I feel secure.”
Katan, who is a two-time cancer survivor, performed a one-woman show on March 13 as part of the U’s Women’s Week celebration at the Salt Lake City Auditorium about her life, her experience with surviving cancer and everything in between. The author of the book My One-Night Stand with Cancer gripped the audience with her experience battling breast cancer at the age of 21.
With only two chairs and a telephone on stage, Katan began the performance by playing herself as she was when she was 16 years old. She wrote a novel called Sixteen, Dateless, and Jewish that was turned down by the Simon & Schuster publishing company.
Katan took the audience through different experiences in her life, including finding her sexual identity and her relationships with women. At 21 years old, she discovered a lump in her breast. She underwent a biopsy and was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her doctor recommended a mastectomy — a surgical removal of the breast.
“My surgeon’s name was Dr. Cutter,” Katan said, “Talk about getting to the point!”
Katan’s surgeon explained to her that breast cancer, on average, takes about five years to grow, so she was about 16 when it started to develop.
“Sixteen, Dateless, and Growing a Cancerous Lump! Simon & Schuster would have totally published that book,” Katan joked.
By the time Katan was 31, she had been cancer-free for 10 years, written a play about her experience surviving cancer and had started a new relationship.
But she had also developed a lump in her other breast.
“How do you tell your father that you have breast cancer again? Are there any singing telegrams for this kind of news? Singing mammograms?” Katan said she asked herself after finding out that the new lump was cancerous.
After having her remaining breast removed, Katan found out she is a carrier of a mutation in the BRCA1 gene whichwhich increases the risk of breast cancer. Her doctor told her she has a 40 percent chance of getting ovarian cancer.
But Katan is determined to live her life and didn’t allow the news to affect her. She met Angela Ellsworth, the love of her life, who is also a cancer survivor. Ellsworth encouraged Katan to run a 10K with her, and soon Katan was running breast cancer awareness races consistently.
Jenna Simkins, a junior in computer science, said she wished she had made her boyfriend attend the performance.
“The end was so powerful,” Simkins said. “You’d never think that someone so young could get (breast cancer).”