Me & My Friends - Niagara Falls 2005
The New Year of 2007 began with my seventh chemo treatment on January 11 and I can say with certainty that each one is definitely worse than the last. I was finding that I couldn’t do simple things anymore. I didn’t have energy to change bed sheets. I would have to stop a couple of times to go upstairs in my own house. Hard to believe that not long ago I could run for an hour. Now I just couldn’t do anything. I physically couldn’t and it was so frustrating because I wanted to do things so that Mike didn’t have to do it all. I felt like it was too much for one person to have to do by themselves and I wanted to contribute. However, I had accepted that I simply had to stop doing. Well maybe I hadn’t totally accepted it but I was trying. It was so very difficult to accept and some days I just wanted to sit down and cry. But I couldn’t go through each day like that. I allowed myself to lose it once in awhile and cry like a big baby but I didn’t want to let it get to me. I’m just too stubborn. However, I had to learn to live within my limitations and there were getting to be many of them.
Me & My Crazy Family - Montmartre, France 2012
After getting through the post-chemo week in a fog, I had an appointment at the Women’s Breast Health Centre again with Dr. Surgeon to discuss what happens next with the upcoming mastectomy. I had thought a lot about what to do and discussed it with Mike many times. I realize that for some women it is a very difficult decision to have their breasts removed. I knew that I would have to remove the left one because of the cancer. There was no choice there. They had found no cancer in the right one so I didn’t have to remove that one. But why would I want to save it when I might develop cancer there in a year or two or five or thirty? I didn’t want to have to go through this all over again. Nor did I want to worry about it and have that little black cloud hanging over my head all the time. I wanted to be sure that I did everything I could possibly do to prevent cancer from ever coming back. I wanted to enjoy the next thirty years. I wanted to have fun and try new things! Besides, if I had only one breast then I would be all lop-sided and that would be kind of weird for me. I decided to have the right one removed as well. As a preventative measure and for peace of mind. Mike supported me 100%.
Cycling at Presque Isle State Park
- Pennsylvania 2011
I wasn’t sure how Dr. Surgeon would react. I had this feeling that I was going to have to somehow justify my decision so I made a list of all the reasons why I wanted to do it and I was prepared to argue my case until the cows came home. I didn’t have to argue at all. Dr. Surgeon was also in agreement and had no problem with my decision. So he would do a bilateral mastectomy and the surgery was scheduled for March 8, 2007. It would be about a five to six hour operation followed by a three day hospital stay. The recovery period afterwards would be several weeks. Radiation therapy might still be a possibility after the surgery recovery but that was still to be determined. Another potential surgery down the road is a hysterectomy because I was now a higher risk for cervical or ovarian cancer.
Just when I was coming to the end of the chemo there was a whole new series of challenges ahead.
My Next Thirty Years - Tim McGraw
