Luan's story

Luan Lawrenson-Woods is an award-winning patient advocate, podcast host, mentor & speaker who is all about empowering women to advocate for themselves & their health. After her own breast cancer diagnosis, she saw first-hand how overwhelming navigating the healthcare system can be & how difficult it can be to advocate for yourself.

In this Real Story, Luan shares more about what it means to advocate for your health & not be overwhelmed in the decision-making process.

 Luan, what should we know about you?

I am originally from the UK. I came here to study & was fortunate to become an Australian citizen. I've lived in Sydney for 12 years; I absolutely love it. This is the first Australian city I came to & it's forever in my heart. I feel fortunate that I was living here when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017. Australia has great success rates with treatment. We have high rates of diagnosis, but we have great treatment for breast cancer.

Heidi: Talk about right place right time

Luan: The timing, my diagnosis, where I lived. I lived down the road from a hospital. I used to get the bus to chemotherapy & then totter back if I felt well enough.

Heidi: Have you got a definition for what you're doing?

Luan: I am a self-health advocate, working to empower women to advocate for their health after a cancer or chronic illness diagnosis.

I'm creating content with a podcast called Regarding Me to give women tips, tools, strategies & confidence to advocate for themselves so they can get healthcare that aligns with what's important to them. Or ‘self-health advocacy’ so that you can advocate for what's right for you.

Heidi: You've touched on making informed decisions, what sparked this passion for you?

Luan: When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was told that because of the type of cancer that I had & the extent of it, I would need a mastectomy & needed to consider my reconstruction options. I didn't know anyone who'd had that diagnosis or needed a reconstruction, I had to explore what reconstruction options were available. My breast surgeon, she was an oncoplastic surgeon who specialised in implants. But there is another option which is autologous reconstruction where tissue is taken from other parts of the body to reconstruct the breast. I was fortunate that, she connected me to a reconstructive plastic surgeon so that I could be fully informed about all the options that were available & make a choice.

Heidi: it's amazing what our bodies are capable of.

Luan: It blew my mind when I heard about this autologous tissue reconstruction - doing this kind of “upcycling” of my body. I had a DIEP flap reconstruction where part of my tummy was taken to reconstruct the breast. I started to share my reconstruction recovery on Instagram under the hashtag #100daysdiep
I started to hear from others who were surprised that there was this autologous reconstruction option. What I learnt from them was that they hadn't been given all their options. Either breast reconstruction hadn't been offered, or they might have been guided towards implant-based reconstruction, because the surgeon that they were talking to specialised in that & the other options weren't all open to them.
I became passionate about this because I was hearing about decision regret or people not being told of the long-term effects of their surgery.
It started me on that path to explore what informed, shared decision-making is.

Heidi: Your oncoplastic surgeon was quite helpful. Were you always getting the information that you needed or was that something you had to work at?

Luan: I worked at it. On reflection there were some things that were said to me, like ‘you don't want to go flat because then you'll have a prosthesis, & it'll keep falling out of your swimmers.’
I decided that aesthetic flat closure wasn’t right for me. But there’s a bias in the way that information was delivered to me.
Otherwise I was given all the options & told where to get them. When I went to see my plastic surgeon, I realised there was an information gap in Australia because they’d said, ‘if you want to know more about autologous tissue reconstruction, you need to look to America for that information because Australia is lacking in it’. Sadly, it still is lacking in accessible information about reconstruction options. I had to work at understanding autologous tissue reconstruction & overcoming that bias of being told ‘you don't want to go flat.’ Rather than accepting what was said, I explored flat closure. I did a pros & cons list for that, just as I did for implants & for the DIEP flap reconstruction.

Heidi: What would your advice be to someone looking into options for reconstruction to make sure they're not getting overwhelmed with the decision-making process?

Luan: Firstly breathe.

I've talked to a lot of surgeons through Rewritten Me, which is a podcast about reconstruction after mastectomy. Surgeons say in most instances it's rare that you need to decide on your reconstruction in that first appointment. It might happen quickly, but for most people it doesn't.

Try & take one decision at a time.

It is overwhelming. There's a lot of information out there & sometimes you need to take it one day, one question, one breath at a time.
Reflect on what's important to you as part of your informed decision-making, as part of the self-advocacy. The definition of self-advocacy that I work with is to know you, know your rights & know what's important to you, what your values are, what your priorities are & what your boundaries are.
Do some self-reflection, know what it is that you're looking for, that can help you sift through the decisions & information.
It can become overwhelming, all the information in your head. One of the pieces of advice you sometimes hear is clearing your mind: dump all that information & writing it all down. That helped me.

Heidi: Was there any advice you were given when it came time to deciding what was right for you?

Luan: I was diagnosed with cancer in one breast & had a unilateral single mastectomy. There was lots of talk in relation to the subtype of cancer that I had, where people had decided to have their healthy breast removed & to have a bilateral mastectomy & reconstruction. I had my mastectomy with a tissue expander and radiotherapy; my reconstruction was the year after. During that time, it was suggested to have the natural healthy breast removed. I started to consider that because a DIEP flap construction can only be done once.

I started to think that because DIEP is a one-shot kind of surgery, should I have both breasts removed & reconstructed?

A great piece of advice that I had from my plastic surgeon was don't make that the only reason to have your healthy breast removed, we can find other ways & there are other parts of the body that it can be reconstructed from if you need a mastectomy later.

I don't carry any genetic variant or mutation. I don't have family history that would increase my risk, so the evidence was that removing the healthy breast didn't reduce my risk of recurrence. A doctor said you're going to be so closely monitored that if there is an issue, it should be picked up early. That was one of the greatest pieces of advice.

Heidi: How do you know or test if a decision that you're making is right for you?

Luan: It might be seen as a bit of an “airy fairy” answer because I feel it, kind of in my body, that something's right for me.
I will also do work to arrive at a decision. I’ll do a pros & cons list. I'm a mind mapper.
What do I know now? What other questions do I have? It comes down to; how would I feel if things were to change in a week or a year, would I be confident with the decision that I've made now. I can only make the decisions that are right for me with the information that I have now.

It's a gut feeling, part of that is not trying to make that decision right there & then.

That for me is a key thing, to not try & make a snap decision.

Heidi: If you could send message to yourself before you were diagnosed, what would you say?

Luan: I would say “you've got you.”

I always thought I was a glass half empty person until I got diagnosed. That if something like that happens to me, I'll be on the floor, just distraught. And I was, but I got back up. I'm not sure I really believed in myself, being able to get back up, but I for sure know that I can now.
You are stronger than you than you think you are, & more courageous than you could ever imagine.

Advocate, advocate, don't be scared to speak up.
It's hard in these knowledge imbalances that we have, with our health professionals. But ask all the questions.

As told to Heidi Flaherty, March 2025

For more about Luan check out

Her website

Regarding Me podcast

Rewritten Me podcast

Instagram