DOWN the track, Catherine Britt just might write a song called Cancer Can’t Hold Me Down.
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The 31-year-old Newcastle country music star has completed two rounds of chemotherapy after an operation to remove a cancerous tumour in her left breast in June.
She has four months of chemo remaining, followed by a month of radiation treatment. But she’s not putting her career on hold.
She just completed shooting a video around Newcastle for the second single, We’re All Waiting, from her Boneshaker album.
One morning early in the shoot, she decided it was time to cut off her hair, which was falling out from the treatment.
“We sat down for brekky and I came to the conclusion we were all ignoring the elephant in the room. All of a sudden, we’re making a video with my bare head.”
Her long-time personal hairdresser, Bianca-Lee “Buffie”
Tinson, from Pandora’s, performed the task in Britt’s Mayfield backyard as her fiance, James Berkeley, nieces, family and bridesmaids for her upcoming wedding looked on.
“It sort of feels normal now,” she said, resting at home with her dog Rascal at her side after a particularly tiring day.
“I feel like I was being fake with the wig. I’m not going to say I’m not going to put on wigs and get around and have fun. But at the moment, it’s a statement: ‘It’s OK to be that way; you’re still beautiful’.”
Britt has rebounded from the surgery, diagnosed as stage 2A invasive ductal carcinoma. She also had a procedure to remove precancerous cells in her cervix.
While the chemo treatment has knocked her around, it hasn’t stopped her in her tracks. She was performing at the recent Gympie Muster and she’s booked to play with Adam Harvey as they perform the Man in Black – Johnny Cash Show at Devonport in Tasmania on September 12 and 13.
If that goes well, the duo will tour regional Australia with the Cash show.
If that’s not enough, she’s planning details for her wedding on October 17.