Where to start.......

Well, maybe from the beginning, I guess that is a very good place to start........we will begin by singing DO RE ME............. uh oh wait, never mind........This is supposed to be  serious stuff LOL

Well no one ever wakes up one day and says " cancer sounds like fun" or "Lets go catch some Cancer today" In fact, most people never think it will happen to them. especially when you are a 32 year old mother of 3 with a rocking Home based business, on the top of her game, (looking smoking MILF  hot too I may add)
Life was great, your 30's is when the fun starts right? Well technically the fun DID start. Yup April 17th at approximately 11:00 AM my life changed forever.  Those words " Your results came back, you have cancer" still ring in my head, At that moment the only thing I could think of was " This is impossible, Im leaving for Vegas in a month for a work retreat, I dont have time for this"

Unfortunately Cancer did not care that day.

Or the next day

Or any other day for that fact.

That was it. that lump I have been feeling for the previous 18 months was not in fact a plugged milk duct from nursing that all the medical people i saw told me it most likely was. It was trying to kill me. My own body was turning on itself. Are you kidding me? No in fact... this was getting serious.

I noticed my lump about a week before I gave birth to our third child ... we lovingly refer to her as our Birth control baby, LOL . I assumed the Lump was just lumpy breast tissue from being pregnant.
The day after she was born I got Mastitis right there. While I was still in the hospital. The day after her birth. This is very unusual, but no one really thought much of it, and who was I to argue that point, they were Medical Professionals, Who was I to argue with that?

We had issues Breastfeeding on that breast, and after being seen by countless Lactation Consultants and talking to various people, no one knew exactly WHY she did not want to nurse on that side at all. She was a Jaundiced baby and was just lazy, maybe she hated nursing on that side?
 Eventually everything evened out and she started nursing like a trooper, but never as much on that one side.

You know when you hear stories about dogs sniffing out cancer I cant help but think about my baby, the cancer sniffer, could feel my cancer before anyone else, she was so in-tuned to me that she KNEW something was not right, Not right at all, but who really takes advice from a baby? Especially Medical advice.

The lump started to grow. Oh I mentioned it at every Dr. Appointment. I mentioned it at every well baby check up, I mentioned it every time i saw anyone.
You know what answer I got?
"HMMMM I have never seen anything like that, maybe its just an infected milk duct, sometimes they stay lumpy till your done nursing"
Who was I to think otherwise. WHO in their right mind even has Breast Cancer cross their mind when they are 32 let alone nursing a new born baby.

I really should have, See Breast Cancer is not new to me. My own mother in fact passed away from Breast Cancer in 2002 after a 10 year battle with the beast known as Breast Cancer. She was Diagnosed at a young age as well 34. found out the day I graduated High school that my mother had Breast Cancer.
In fact both of her sisters have had a battle with the disease as well.

I may have been in a sort of denial, but also lulled into a sense of false hope by the medical community?

Soon after my my moms sister had genetic testing done for the BRCA1 gene mutation and it came out that she had the gene mutation I decided to undergo the testing as well.
It was a simple blood test that would  change how I dealt with my cancer diagnosis.

And you guessed it. I am BRCA1+

This means I have a gene mutation that makes me at a more increased risk for Breast and Ovarian Cancer. I will get into that in another post.

and this begins my journey into the world of Breast cancer.

I hope you stick around and her the rest of my story, I have plenty to share

I will leave you with this quote

Nobody trips over mouintains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed over the mouintain
Unknown


I have crossed over that mouintain.