
Just keep going
In 2013 I was diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma - breast cancer. I had just turned 40 years old.
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It was therapeutic for me to write so I blogged my way through each step from diagnosis to each surgery and through chemo and radiation treatments.
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For a couple years, my entire life revolved around the cancer and getting through the treatment so I could live. I know family and friends got tired of hearing about it but for me, there was nothing else.
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After the treatments completed and the hair grew back, I settled back into life but spent the next almost 10 years driving myself crazy trying to get back to the woman I was prior to cancer.
Today, I have finally learned that the woman I was had died on the day I was diagnosed. I worked through the process of grieving her and teach myself every day how to live as the new me.
While I am in a much better place mentally, my goal now and forever will be about managing the health conditions that came from all the cancer treatment and the mental trauma that held my body in survival mode for far too long.
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If my story gives someone else a heads up or a bit of inspiration, I will feel like this whole experience wasn't wasted. Cancer survivors often ask 'why me' and while we don't live in self pity for long, we always hope there was a good reason to have been dragged through this hell.