Cancer left me with tattoos I never asked for: This is how I reclaimed my body

Liz Craker was 31 when she found the lump at the top of her left breast in the shower. Breastfeeding, she assumed it was mastitis and made an appointment at her local health clinic.

“It never crossed my mind that it would come back as cancer, not in my wildest dreams. I had no family history,” Liz, from Salt Lake City, Utah, remembers.

Her doctor suggested giving up caffeine and chocolate, which can affect breast tissue, and he tried to aspirate the lump and failed. Liz was sent for tests, then a biopsy. “I got the diagnosis on a Monday, and I had surgery that Friday. It just takes over your life immediately,” Liz, now 60, remembers.

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She was one of the youngest patients with breast cancer her doctor had ever seen, and she had to juggle the frightening diagnosis with parenting her son, two, and nine-month-old daughter. At hospital appointments, she was warned not to hold her baby afterwards because of the chemicals used in scans.

The news knocked her flat. “When I was first diagnosed, I thought ‘I’m going to die!’ But then immediately I got angry and said, ‘no, I’m not. I have two children to raise’. I had a little boxing match with God. I remember going to sleep that night just holding my Bible on my chest in absolute shock. I thought, all I’ve got is this, so I’m going to hang on.”

Her then-husband, Dave, was devoted. He came with her to chemotherapy and plugged his laptop into the same wall socket as her IV machine — in the days before working from home was the norm. “We would joke about him unplugging me. He was amazing,” she says.

Their church and other moms stepped in to look after the children. And Liz clung to small routines, trying to give the children as happy a childhood as possible while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. 

But life with two babies and treatment was survival mode. “I remember just as I was diagnosed, I was potty training my son, and I thought, not even going to bother. That was not a priority. He figured it out by himself eventually.”

She was pale and exhausted, but she kept going. Without a dishwasher, Liz resorted to extremes. “I was too tired to stand at the sink to wash bottles and sippy cups, so I threw them in the washing machine. My husband would come home and say, what is that god-awful noise, and I’d say, it’s bottles. But it worked.”

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Radiation brought its own strangeness. “The process is wild. They do incredible algebra, geometry, math to make sure they are lining up the radiation the best way, and they tattoo these little black dots on you where they line it all up.”

She had five dots around her breast and one in between. They were permanent, but she didn’t think about them much at the time. “You’re so strapped for energy at the time it doesn’t cross your mind.”

The cancer hadn’t spread, and, when Liz was given the all-clear after five years, she whooped her way out of the doctor’s office. Miraculously, she had another baby, but as the seasons passed, the little black dots across her chest remained as a permanent reminder of the gruelling time.

She stopped wearing V-necks to conceal the dot in the middle of her chest, but almost three decades after being given the all-clear, she decided she wanted the dots gone.

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“I didn’t like them. I have other tattoos that I do like, but I didn’t like these,” she remembers. So after the kids had left home and her amicable divorce from Dave was finalised, she had them lasered away through tattoo-removal service Removery, which offers the service free to cancer survivors.

“It was very rewarding to go in there to basically get zapped, like similar to radiation, but for something I chose to do. When they were gone I felt fantastic, like there was a mark on me that I didn’t choose to have, but I had to have. Looking down and seeing them gone was empowering,” she says.

It felt like reclaiming her body, and she advises others to do the same. “Do it. Take back the autonomy over your body. For me it was like closing a chapter.”

“Radiation dots are critical during treatment, but their removal is a powerful yet largely unsung part of the healing process,” said Removery’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Josh Weitz. “These visual reminders can keep survivors feeling tethered to their illness. For individuals seeking options to leave that chapter behind them, our free program uses best-in-class laser technology to help them reclaim their bodies and take a definitive, forward-looking step towards holistic recovery.”

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Cancer changed more than Liz’s body. It changed her direction. Before her diagnosis, she had been a journalist, swimming coach and stay-at-home mom. Inspired by her experience of illness, she later moved into health work, helping patients access insurance and navigate systems. She studied for a master’s in healthcare administration and based her thesis on infant mortality and the inequalities in cancer survival rates.

“I learned that women of color do not survive as well. Their survivorship rates are lower. And I learned your zip code designates your survival rate. It made me have a righteous anger about people not having access,” she says.

Looking back, Liz shrugs off the description ‘brave.’

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“Everybody thinks I’m so courageous and so strong, but I was simply putting one foot in front of the other, and all of a sudden the years added up.”

She has no fear of cancer now. “It used to be my biggest fear, but I’ve already fought it. Today I feel badass. I feel brilliant. 

Still close friends with Dave, Liz now lives in a mother-in-law apartment in her son’s basement, on hand to help with her two grandchildren. She hikes, does CrossFit, volunteers with students, and is active in her church. 

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“Just last night the kids started talking about getting a bigger house so I could stay with them forever. It was so sweet,” she laughs.

Crying at weddings and graduations, her adult children used to laugh fondly at Liz’s “cancer moments,” those flashes of joy at simply being alive. But she no longer thinks of them as cancer moments. “I’m just happy to be alive,” she adds.