The beginning

Living takes courage and cancer forces you to find that courage to fight for your life.  I will never forget the day that they told me I have breast cancer, December 2, it was a Friday. I was told I had a 6 cm tumor which put me in the stage 3 category.  I later found out that I was triple positive, meaning that my cancer was hormone receptive and I also had some nodes involved. I was looking at chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation.  I was told that this was going to be a marathon and in my head I just kept thinking "Oh yea? Watch me sprint this bitch!"  I wanted to put it behind me before I even got started.

With my diagnosis they gave me a book to walk me through what was going to be happening to me and quotes from survivors.  When I was flipping through the book I came across a quote from a woman who said that her husband saw her diagnosis as a death sentence but she saw it as something much worse, a life sentence.  She went on to say that dying was easy and that choosing to live would be hard, that would require everything she had.  I am not going to lie, there were so many days during chemo that I wondered why I chose to fight.  Dying on my terms seemed so much more appealing, I wouldn't have had to give up all the things that I gave up to be hurting so much, emotionally and physically.  They told me I would live another 2 years, I would never see 30.  I tell you what, my 30th birthday is going to be one heck of celebration, I have fought for that damn birthday! So why share now you may be asking?  December 2nd was a while ago and I did consider blogging early on, to keep everyone updated but in honesty, it made it all feel to real. So here it is.  My first cancer blog and I am going to warn you, its a bit of an information dump.  As scattered as my mind feels right now but I feel like I'm playing catch up. The rest will be shorter (I hope).

I had to make a lot of decisions during those early months.  I decided to keep working and I also decided to put a pause on my masters degree.  I decided to keep my cancer off of Facebook (until now) because I didn't want it to become how everyone saw me (it really didn't matter, it happened anyway).  I was told there was a chance that chemo would effect my fertility and if I wanted to have my own biological children I should preserve eggs (I thank my littlest brother's girlfriend for that information and will be eternally grateful for her coming into our lives when she did).  So I did, but my baby issues are a whole other blog I will treat you to later.  I found out that I had Li Fraumeni syndrome, which felt like yet another death sentence.  LFS is a genetic disorder which makes one more susceptible to soft tissue cancers, breast cancer being one of them.  My parents and brothers were asked to get tested as well to help in my diagnosis.  My parents did and one of my brothers did (the other had his own selfish reasons for not doing it).  They all tested negative which lead to a de novo diagnosis which just meant I am the first and it was a random genetic mishap (I swear if it weren't for bad luck I would have none at all).  I have gone through 6 courses of chemo in those months and come out the other side.

I have learned how truly vain I am and I have grieved for the body that I had just come to peace with. It took a long time to accept and be truly comfortable with my beautifully imperfect body.  I have cried more tears than I even knew I had for the loss of my hair and my breasts.  Despite them trying to kill me, they were mine and I rather like the size and shape of them.  Everyone keeps bringing up the new boobs that I will get and the great tummy tuck that comes along (I think all my surgery stuff is another post entirely!) but I would gladly give it up to keep it all and have my long hair back. So please people, stop telling women with breast cancer how lucky they are to get new boobs! Because I bet dollars to dimes (what does that even mean?!) that they would gladly give up the new, fake, decorative, pair for their old ones.  

I have definitely had my rough, pity party days but more importantly I have had so many good days. From the get go I was determined that I wasn't going to let cancer take more from me than it already was.  Yea fine, take my hair it will grow back.  Mutilate my body, I will find amazing surgeons to fix it.  But I was not going to become a victim; I wasn't going to curl up and just let all this happen to me.  I decided to be to positive, overly positive in the beginning, mostly because that is who my students deserved everyday.  In the end, it helped me make it through chemo so well.  Whenever I was asked how I was doing, I would say good even if it was far from the truth.  I spoke it into being and I made it through and I will keep making it through.  I keep reminding myself that if God brings me to it, He will bring me through it.  There is a reason that this is happening to me.  This is not meant to break me but rather to promote me.