Things are going well again for singer Dominique de Bont (28) from Waalwijk, former participant in the Regional Song Festival. She carries the BRCA1 gene and therefore has an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Three months ago she underwent a preventive mastectomy. Together with her friend Daan she wrote a song about that difficult period.
Dominique found out she has the gene after her grandmother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and her mother was diagnosed with the same gene. Since then she has been checked annually.
“I no longer felt the uncertainty of having to check it every time and then hoping that it was all right. That broke me down,” she says in the radio program KEIgoeiemorgen!. Her friend Daan Zwierink, singer of boy band Mainstreet, saw how much stress that caused. Daan: “You feel like it’s a kind of ticking time bomb, when will they ever come with bad news?”
“The right time never comes.”
When she was 22, her doctor once mentioned preventive surgery. Dominique started thinking about it more and more seriously. “The main thing is that I always had in my head: will the moment ever come when I feel I have to do it? But I realized that you have to take control yourself to make that choice.”
Last summer she decided to move on. “Then I thought: I’m just going to call the hospital and have to start the process, because the right time never comes.” She had surgery in January.
“Then you suddenly feel like an 80-year-old grandmother who is dependent on her boyfriend.”
It felt like some kind of mind fuck. “Because you’re having a nice meal in a restaurant the night before and a few hours later you’re completely exhausted. That’s strange, because it happens all at once.” Daan adds: “You also found it difficult, because you are not sick.”
The first operation is the most intense. “They just completely remove all the tissue, your entire breast becomes empty.” That caused two major wounds. “Then you suddenly feel like an eighty-year-old grandmother who is dependent on her boyfriend. I didn’t like that, but he took very good care of me and really put everything aside.”
“It felt like I was standing still, while everything around you continues as usual and you can’t participate.”
Dominique is recovering well and can do everything again, including lifting and full use of her arms. Still, it felt exciting to pick up singing and writing again. “I thought: will I ever be able to do that well again? Because I feel so much pressure. Then you only really notice that you miss that if it doesn’t work out.”
She incorporated those feelings into a new song with Daan. “It felt like I was standing still, while everything around you continues as usual and you can’t participate.” At first she kept it to herself.
“You find you can’t pass it up.”
She decided to share it anyway, so that people understand what is going on. “You notice that you can’t leave it alone, that you have to do something with it.” Daan: “We went into the studio to actually finish another song, but wanted to make something new. Something that is about the past period and in which we could express our feelings.”
The song, which is similar to the sound of Suzan and Freek, was only finished the day before yesterday. The release date is not yet known. “But it will be before the summer.” The couple is looking forward to the future and hopes to perform live together. “We are of course somewhat in the same boat as Suzan and Freek, but we wrote this story so that we can continue on our own,” Daan concludes.
