My Story
"Excuse me. That's not on my schedule."
I stared plainly at the doctor – half expecting her to reveal the punchline to a horrible joke, hoping she read the lab results wrong. Either way, I was unwilling to process the news I just heard. I had cancer.
Ironically, cancer was no stranger to me. After years of working with the American Cancer Society and with oncologists, I was used to seeing people with cancer. Some of them had cancer, and for some, cancer had them. But it was always them…not me.
I'd barely made it home from my annual mammogram when the phone rang, and my doctor told me to return for a second mammogram and biopsies. The initial diagnosis was Stage 0 breast cancer. No big deal. But within short order, the cancer had spread to eight lymph nodes and a new diagnosis: Stage 4.
My journey was one hellish ride. Anything that could go wrong, went wrong. With my very first chemotherapy treatment, I developed "catastrophic complications" and over the course of the next several months, my husband was told three times I might not make it. During a seven-week hospital stay, I overheard two doctors discussing how I was going to die.
But every time, I knew that I had a choice to make, and that choice was to live. After all, I couldn't let my large support system down! Having worked for an oncologist and the American Cancer Society in the past, I knew that my mental attitude was critical in the fight. And my mental attitude was usually to face my cancer head-on with humor!
No more would I participate in a system where cancer was the villainous star and the people with cancer, like me, were watching silently on the sidelines. This was not living. This was waiting to die.
This is why I'm on a mission to help people no longer "be fine" with cancer by energizing their voices and expanding their choices. In other words, to truly LIVE!
Fate whispers to the warrior: "You cannot withstand the storm."
The warrior whispers back: "I am the storm."