Time for some R & R

Spring was on us and the thought of summer was truly sweet. Summer quarter was short and then a much needed break from school would fallow, I looked forward to this!
In September there was a big trade show that my sister would work in Las Vegas. We would make it a road trip; I think its part of hanging onto our childhood, we took a road trip every summer as children. This year was different, she had lost her job and was going to job seek instead of working. Just when I had decided not to go my daughter and her husband said they would like to go along this year, so the plan was on. We would do our road trip to Vegas after all. We would leave on September 11 and get back on September 20th just one day before the new quarter at school would begin.

Talking With God

Some nights as I lay in bed talking to God I would be reminded that I hadn’t had my routine checkups. I worried that I hadn’t taken time for myself to have a colonoscopy, a pap test, let alone another mammogram. I would deal with it all later; I needed to figure out what it was I was going to do now. My office skills were so outdated, who was going to hire this 50 something woman with these old skills not to mention a bad knee and bonk back. So the decision was made, off to school I went. It would take two years to get a legal assistant degree and this would be a wide open field by the time I finished. I tore into the work that consumed me. Trying to learn this new stuff after doing the same thing for so many years would prove to be tougher than I first thought, but I was doing it. It took everything I had.
By now my husband was living in his own little world of working two jobs, playing in his band and taking care of his elderly parents. I didn’t see him much and hoped our relationship could make it through another bump in the road. Soon he had to place his father with severe dementia in an assisted living home leaving his mother alone. At that point he pretty much moved in with his mom and just came home on Sundays when his brother could give him a break. It was really Ok, we have to take care of our parents, it made me wish I had spent more time with my mom instead of spending so much time at that stupid job.
In February of 2010 on a Monday morning my husband’s cell phone started ringing. The woman on the other end of the phone explained to him that his father had passed away in his sleep during the night and they needed him to come and make arrangements. Just one month later in March his mother would follow and take up her place in heaven also. The year had hardly started and it seemed we were in for quite the ride.

I Praise You In This Storm

My mom had been sick for years with a birth defect of her heart. It was stressful watching her life, it was a rollercoaster. One day she was doing well the next thing you knew they were telling you she might not make it another week. Work was crazy; I had been promoted and was running the company I had been with for over 20 years. With the promotion came a new level of stress, managing people, purchasing, paper work and really late nights. With the sorrow I felt for my sick mother I buried my head in my work and there I stayed.
On August 27, 2007 my mother went home to be with the Lord. I retreated into a shell and stayed for the next year….
On November 30th 2008 due to the economy they closed the door on the business I poured my heart and soul into. Now what?

Life Goes On

On a summer night in 2006 I had went to the YMCA an attended a swim aerobic class, feeling refreshed but exhausted I quickly smeared lotion on my entire body, as I touched my right breast I felt something strange and different. Some type of familiar but indescribable fear shot through my soul. Not again?
Next morning I called the Breast Diagnostic center to make an appointment, I quickly let her know my concerns and she assured me that if I felt pain in the area it was most likely just a hormone thing. And after all was done that was exactly what it was. My breast had fibroids in them, harmless rubbery lumps that would swell and shrink around the different times of the month. So life went on.

Pink

My favorite color was pink and I hated it that everything that promoted breast cancer was pink! I had this sense that if I stayed away from anything that had to do with breast cancer awareness that I would not be affected by the disease. Don’t ask me why, just some silly thought I kept. So if I stayed away from pink, I started menstruating at 12 years old, had my babies young and breast feed each one of them, I had done everything right to put me in a low risk category for getting breast cancer. Besides breast cancer doesn’t run in my family, no one as far back as I knew had ever had to deal with breast cancer.

Lumpy Boobs

It was 1985 when I had a routine physical exam that sent me to the mammogram machine. That was a joke; twenty five year olds don’t need mammograms. Well the doctor decided it would be a good idea because my breasts were dense and lumpy whatever that meant? Nothing came of it and I went about my life. For some reason that mammogram haunted me, but why.
As the years went by I started having my yearly routine mammogram and every time they would scare the crap out of me! They could never just do the test and send me on my way, they always had to do an ultra sound or have the doctor look at the results to see if we needed to biopsy one of these lumps that had been there forever. No one really ever talked to me much about why they always had a concern and I always just wrote it off to lumpy boobs that they weren’t sure of.

My Story

I started blogging when I returned to school. I had no idea what I was doing and had to create a short blog for a grade. I still know little about what I'm doing, but I will learn as I go. I'm now going into the fifth month of my cancer and have had quite a rough ride. I'm tired of the TV, my Kindle, and staring at the ceiling. I haven't felt like doing much more, don't get me wrong I have had a few good hours and even a couple good days. So, for my friends and family, I decided to put it in writing!