Chapter 1

Well so much for saying good night to everyone in my previous post. Seems I may pull another all-nighter, I am not tired at all with all these thoughts running around in my head.
So where do I start? Rewind to 3-4 years ago? I always told myself and expressed it to Brandon that I felt like I have cancer. There is no way to explain it and too hard to try and make sense of it. It was just a feeling that I had, without having any hard evidence, just a weird belief. And maybe with the power of the mind, I jinxed myself somehow and turned my body into a host of the bone chilling, lump in the throat, ever so sensitive disease they call cancer. In my case, breast cancer.
I can't point my finger on the calendar and tell you a date when I first felt the lump. Can't even remember how I came across it. It was sometime in June, but there it was, a pea size, hard lump that had formed under my right armpit on my "side boob". I wear underwire bras and sometimes get irritated in that area from them so I passed the lump off for a while, thinking it was caused by that. After a few weeks passed and it hadn't disappeared, and seemed to grow a small amount I called my Dr. for an appt.
Aug 15 was my first visit with my Dr. I couldn't hold back the tears welling in my eyes as I told her "I found a lump on my breast". Saying it out loud for the first time was acknowledgement that this is serious and something could really be wrong. She sent me for an ultrasound.
The ultrasound results came back and of course, didn't show much. Just assuring me that yes, there is a mass there. And not one, but two. So the next step was a biopsy.
At this point (Sept. 20) the only people who knew about my concerns were Brandon and a couple good friends at work. And in the mix of it Brandon and I were in the process of buying and moving into our house. An amazing experience and a step up in our relationship, with the terrifying thought that I may have cancer. So on the day of signing the papers and getting the keys to our new house I made a stop to get poked with needles, extracting tissues to be examined. And the results were devasting- breast cancer.
Oct.3 was the day of diagnosis. A bit of irony, being the month of national awareness of breast cancer. It was the only day thus far I have let myself cry (give or take a few weak moments). The hardest part was telling my family. How do you bring it up? The news was out there, and knowing how quick word travels in a small town, I knew everyone would hear of it soon.
To be continued...