If you’ve kept up with my blog, or know me, you know I’m a positive and active person.  My aim is to keep things positive in life and in stride.  Understand urgency versus pace.

Well, today I went running.  Trying to get as many runs in as I can at this point… before what you ask?  To get it in before Chemo starts in 6 days…

See, on September 16th, I found a lump.  I’d never found a lump.  But because of who I am, as a woman, as a person, as a medical provider… there was no waiting.  If there was one thing I knew well, I knew boundaries- when it wasn’t something I could control.  So I got an appointment, which led to 3 more days of appointments for diagnostic tests to evaluate this lump.  I wasn’t worried.  I knew this was something that could be minor or serious.  I tend to see the glass half full.  I went to my moms on my June moms 2006 facebook group and asked them.  It was safe there.  They all reassured me I’d be ok.  So many of them had found similar things that were fine.  Whew.  Not stressed.  Just get the answer on the other side and I’d be good.

On September 28th, I got the path report call from the biopsy.  Positive for cancer.  OMG.  I’m 38 healthy.  Active.  I don’t smoke.  I don’t drink much (avg 1 per week).  I have great stats- weight, cholesterol, BP, BMI, etc… I breastfed both of my children to a year.  Family history isn’t rampant- Grandma found out she had breast cancer when she was in her 70s just before dying of other problems.  My cousin had a recent cancer diagnosis elsewhere but she is in her 40’s.  How does this happen to me?  How will it affect me?  I didn’t want to tell anyone because it would devastate them!

See statistics tell us that in only 5-15% of these cases is it hereditary. Only 12% of women are diagnosed with breast cancer in their life.  5% under the age of 40.

On September 30th, my birthday, I sat with the Oncological Surgeon and talked about the plan and his recommendation on what we do.  My pathology was Stage 1, grade 3, Triple Positive.  He reassured me that this is treatable- and I have a less than 10% chance of recurrence once treatment was complete.  First question out of my mouth was… can I run?  He was positive about this and said I could do anything my body told me I could do.

However the end all of this is that I have faith that I will survive this and be free of this once the course of this is run.  6 months of harder times with 6 months of uneasy times.

Throughout this process, I have found such strength in my best of friends and such support in friends, family, and community.  I have not enjoyed telling this news to anyone, however I have found out how much love I have surrounding me, including many of the athletes at my school!

In the end, God will see me through this.  Why I was chosen for this, I don’t know.  I do know that God has a plan- either I or someone else will be blessed or used in his amazing plan, and as a friend recently said- even if I don’t know for a while what it is.  It will be his plan.  1st Peter 1:1-7 tells us this.  He has foreknowingly set us out a plan knowing what will come of us and we must have faith that he has this plan for a reason.

I will stay strong.  I will continue this journey with a positive mindset and God carrying me through.  I will make it to the other side.  And I’m gonna run as much as I can and attempt to complete 1 Sprint Spartan and 2 half marathons 🙂

So young women, feel your boobies- early detection truly saves your life!  Buying Pink from companies putting $ back into cancer funds are what help pay for all the research that has helped Breast Cancer go from a death sentence to a Girl Interrupted.