The Beginning

(Me, just weeks before my biopsy on 10-19-2016--snap chatting...AKA, having fun.)

Tonight, I started a series called "Chasing Life".  It's about a young woman who finds out she has cancer and is struggling to come to terms with the initial shock factor and how to tell her family.

I've been struggling to write all of the events which lead me to this very event as well.  Finalizing it in writing seems to be one of the best ways for me to accept it so I can move on.

Today, I have been living with cancer for an innumerable amount of days--no one can tell me when it began.  Today, however, I have known for a solid fact that I have cancer for 281 days.

On October 19, 2016, I was scheduled to have a biopsy of the lump that was found in my breast.  The biopsy was very early in the morning, and the only people I had informed about it at the time was my husband, my three sisters, and my mother in law.  One would question why my mother wasn't informed at the time.  The answer is simple.  As the main character in "Chasing Life" mentions, "I didn't want to worry Mom more than I had to at the time."

Most of us feel a small sense of invincibility when we are going in for a biopsy.  I had never, even once, considered that all of my fears about having cancer would eventually come to an ironic climax.

Over the next series of blog posts, I will write in full about the events, feelings, and shocking realities I have had to experience over the last 281 days.  I will make the account as accurate as I can recall--I only say that because "chemo brain" has played some damaging games with my poor brain.  However, my "long term" memory is clear as day, and I consider everything up to my initiation with chemotherapy to be long term.  If I dwell on those days and weeks prior to starting treatment for too long, the grieving comes back to haunt me, but for the sake of remembering and telling my story, I will face it all again.

Here's to not wanting to scare Mom, and to facing the reality that I had to scare her one day....but what day would I be able to do it?  Here's to countless days without sleep as tears drenched my pillow.

Here's to knowing your life is in jeopardy.
With deepest love and regards,

Crys

October 16, 2016--happy to be at the end of a pregnancy so I can "feel better".  I kid you nor, I could hardly breath as I walked through this pregnancy--it was awful, but I was still so oblivious to my inevitable pain.

Daddy on October 16, 2016--living life with a fun grin and hard work. Little did he know, the work load would just get harder as he would become my only caregiver day after day after day for the last 281 days.  Poor guy could have used a lot of help.