A bit of backstory

Tomorrow is Chemo No. 7!

Chemo No. 6 went well - I have been really enjoying feeling more "like myself." I have been telling folks that I didn't realize how out of sorts I felt with those first four biweekly treatments until the blanket of yuck was lifted. I still get tuckered out irritatingly easy, and I often can't feel my fingertips - but those are easy side effects.

"Who knows if perhaps you were made ... for just such a time as this?" Esther 4:14

I've gotten all sorts of interesting questions from folks the last few months. The most common one is how I found out that I had cancer in the first place. So I thought I'd answer that here, since we all know the importance of backstory.

The short answer is it was discovered completely by accident, which was both incredibly chilling and a tremendous blessing. I had felt an odd area in my right armpit that seemed weird to me, but when I called it to the Seward doc's attention, she said, "You know, I think that's nothing. You have no history of breast cancer in your family and you are 37 years old. But if it makes you feel better, we can get you scheduled for an ultrasound and mammogram."

So I blew it off - what were the chances? They don't do both ultrasounds and mammograms locally, and it meant a trip to Anchorage. I scheduled an appointment for a couple of months later, when my 5-year-old would be on her Christmas break from school. I am all about easy peasy, after all, and I am not one who relishes long car rides with little kids.

(Yes - I appreciate the irony of that statement; I stopped counting a couple of months ago how often we have made that drive since January.)

My doc didn't order a mammogram for both sides. It turns out that's not how it's usually done, and the techs at Providence Imaging Center asked if they could call Seward and get the OK to do the left and the right. Fine by me, I said. I received a letter a few days later that biopsies in three areas were recommended. I wasn't worried, because I had received a biopsy several years earlier that had turned up nothing.

But lo and behold, I received The Call on Jan. 9 from the Seward doctor. The news was not good - and the cancer was on the side that wasn't even supposed to be scanned. Thankfully, the two biopsies on the right had not turned up anything. This doctor delivered the news really badly, but I suspect that's because she is a new doctor and hasn't had a lot of experience doing these kinds of things. Hopefully, I was good practice ... but then, I never heard from her again to see how I was doing so who knows.

Two days later I saw a surgeon in Anchorage and two days after that I had a lumpectomy. The surgeon was able to get all of the tumor out and it was determined that the cancer had not spread to my lymph nodes. This was awesome news! But since it's triple negative cancer, it also meant I had a 30 percent chance of recurrence without wicked bad chemo, then radiation and/or mastectomy.

Yet I know that God doesn't work in percentages. Either I have a 100 percent chance of getting cancer again or zero. I am confident that whatever it is, there's a purpose in what's happening and what's to come in such a time as this.