On July 31, 2023 I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. It is hard to put in to words how this diagnosis rocked our world. Last December I had some regular imaging done and they saw something they wanted to keep and eye on. In my follow up imaging they were more concerned so I had a biopsy right after I dropped the kids off at FSY. Dave and I sat in my doctor's office together when they told me I was positive for breast cancer. I was terrified. I was in denial. I was overwhelmed. I cried and cried. I have never felt so distraught and scared. We got to the car and I called my dad. I wasn't sure how to tell Cameron and I thought maybe it would be best for my dad to tell him. Cameron figured out that something was wrong and we ended up telling him. Then we picked up the girls from the gym and told them. I felt so empty. I felt blank. It's so hard to describe. We called our families and then Dave called a friend, Mark Winkler, who owns the lab where my testing was done. He told us to give him a minute. Dave gave me a blessing and I immediately felt peace. I wasn't sure what my diagnosis would be but I knew that everything would be OK. When Mark called us back he had looked up my imaging and told us that my tumor was very small so we were very relived. I went for a walk by myself to process. That night surprisingly I slept really good. The next morning when I woke up I opened my phone and this picture popped up as an ad. I knew that it was a message from God that he would be with me in whatever I had ahead of me. It brought me so much peace. I felt him so close and knew that I was not alone.
The next few weeks were spent trying to figure out what we needed to do to fight the cancer. At first it seemed like it would be super easy. It was going to be a minor surgery and a few rounds of radiation. When I had my MRI done they saw some other tissue that didn't look right so they did a MRI guided biopsy. This test had a long waiting period so we called Mark Winkler again. He got me right in. We learned that it would have been about 6 weeks to wait. If I had waited the six weeks it would have moved me into stage 2 and I would have had to do 15 weeks of chemo before I had my mastectomy. It would have extended my treatments by about 6 months when you include recovery time. The MRI biopsy showed a secondary cancer that they call a death sentence. It forms in the tissue but doesn't form a tumor until stage 4. My tiny little tumor saved my life. There were so many tests that came back with bad results in the beginning. It was very discouraging. We learned that both of my cancers were HER2+. This means that while they were stage one they were both aggressive. My doctor asked if I would feel comfortable without a mastectomy knowing that my body had created this sneaky cancer. I knew I wouldn't be at peace so I decided to have a double mastectomy. This was devastating for me. I was so upset. So for a few months I was just in limbo while we made plans for my treatment but then my oncologist said we had to get things moving. I kept a journal during this time in an app called dayone. There were so many miracles along the way. I recorded them in that journal.
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