Living this amazing life I have been given

In September of 2020, I went in to get my very first mammogram. I almost didn’t do it; I had a meeting to get to at work and thought, “No one in my family has cancer, that won’t be what I get," and I was only 41 years old. But I changed my mind and decided I’d better go.

Two hours after the mammogram, I got a call. That call was what I would still describe as the scariest part of this entire journey – I could hear the panic in the nurse’s voice as she told me that they’d found a lump and I needed to get to the cancer center immediately.

Two days later, I was biopsied, and the following week I was told I did, in fact, have breast cancer. My friends and family in the room were in tears, trying to process what we’d just been told.

I felt like I already knew that I was going to be told that it was cancer; I knew from that phone call what my diagnosis would be – so I was calm, stone faced and simply asked what we do next.

It was November 2020, at the height of COVID, when I had my double mastectomy. Miraculously, I didn’t get sick while I was in the hospital, but the staff was noticeably short and I remembered feeling a bit like an afterthought, though I knew they were doing their best. The next month, I was told I would start chemo, followed by radiation.

My hair started falling out around Christmas time that year. Winter came and went; perhaps a silver lining for me that COVID coincided with chemo, I could essentially hide indoors while dealing with it all. I couldn’t bring anyone with me to chemo due to the pandemic, but my mom showed up to the parking lot every time to give me a hug and a smile and sometimes a note on my car. Chemo eventually came to an end after five months and radiation began.

By July 2021, I had completed my treatment and was ready to start feeling like myself again. They called this the “marathon” part of the treatment: when suddenly you’re done and you look back at the blur of what just happened to your life, and you must find a way to adjust and process who you are now, which is different than before in so many ways.

After my mastectomy, they told me I was cancer free. The chemotherapy and radiation were an extra preventative, so I was feeling like I did everything right and was ending the treatment as an A+ student.

Then, as I know so many of us fear, the cancer returned. In February of this year, my chiropractor noticed a lump on my chest. She suggested I get it checked out and I left there and went straight to the ER. After an ultrasound there, a CT scan a week later, a biopsy the week after that and a PET scan after a month, it was my truth – the cancer had returned. Recurring breast cancer that had moved to my bones.

By default, because of its recurrence, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Metastatic was a word I had tried to bury in my vocabulary, but now I was to face it without a choice. The good news was that since it is the same type of breast cancer, I could take a pill to combat it rather than IV chemo again. A silver lining for sure. And now, I will continue this treatment until the cancer outsmarts it. And when it does, I will try a new treatment, and I will make that work too.

Today, I am feeling good. This is not the end for me. I go to work, I sing in a band, I take care of my three beautiful children, I travel, I perform in community theatre, I go to concerts, I spend time with my friends and family. I am LIVING this amazing life I have been given.

Now I am a survivor and also a warrior. If this diagnosis does anything positive, it shows you how beautiful and precious life is. When you stop and see what you have, what you’ve accomplished and who you have in your life, you are appreciative and grateful for each day. I have earned these scars, and I will continue to fight. I have much more to see and do