Judith Lucy on her cancer diagnosis: ‘I’m a bit over getting so much material out of my life’

One of Australia’s hardest-working comedians is still laughing at the timing of a breast cancer diagnosis just as she set out to launch a book about wellness. Two days out from surgery, she talks burnout, Buddhism and saying goodbye to her boobs

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Judith Lucy cannot get a cold. A few hours before I’m due to meet her for a walk around the rose gardens and classic conservatory of the St Kilda Botanical Gardens, a stone’s throw from her home in Melbourne’s south-east, the beloved comedian is on a telehealth call from the front seat of her publicist’s car.

Her doctor needs to go over the results from the previous day’s scans to confirm everything is looking good – good enough to perform the double mastectomy they have planned for Friday, three weeks after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The cancer isn’t appearing anywhere else on the scans, she learns, but a compromised immune system going into surgery would throw the whole thing out of whack. So with the blustery wind and grey skies at our backs, we retreat into her home instead. The walk up and down the hallway, from the front door of her lovely weatherboard cottage to the neat living room at the back will have to make do for our very short walk.

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