IT WAS A BLINDSIDED DIAGNOSIS

In 2016, I was on my way to visit with my daughter when I received a phone call from my primary doctor that I needed to have additional tests done after she received the results of my recent 3-D mammogram. I was in the airport about to board a plane. I was alone, surrounded by strangers who were all on their own journey. I had no choice but to not think about the call until I returned from the trip. I was allowed one more weekend of freedom from the truth of a breast cancer diagnosis. Since that day my thoughts and decisions all revolve around that diagnosis. I went from thinking I was having a simple lumpectomy, or as I called it a “pebblectomy”, to a double mastectomy. Since I didn’t have any signs or symptoms, no family history of cancer, and I had multiple mammograms over the years, the cancer tumor had to be very small. Unfortunately, after each test and multiple biopsies, the results became more serious. A double mastectomy follow by 16 chemo treatments was the recommended treatment to hopefully rid my body of cancer. I cried for days over the news of having to have a mastectomy. It seemed like an unthinkable procedure. I felt I had to consent to the mutilation of my body in order to live cancer-free. The goal of eradicating breast cancer and saving generations of women from having to face that same reality has become a passion of mine. I am not a scientist nor a doctor, but I do have a voice and a story to tell. We all must encourage, and even demand that resources be made consistently available to the cancer scientists and physicians and that it is not negotiable. I want to be one of the old women who tell the story of what it was like before the breast cancer immunization. I want to be one of the last women of a generation who had to have their breasts removed in order to be a breast cancer survivor.