Seven Years

 I hit a milestone on Saturday.  I'm 7 years cancer free, so to speak.

My lumpectomy was on May 7, 2015.  I wound up with 6 plus weeks of radiation. There's other good stuff that makes you want to scream but that was the start of my medical fun.

Did I have a feeling something was wrong?  Maybe a tiny bit.  Something felt off with me.  I was falling asleep way too easy.  I didn't feel anything.  I fall into the category of dense tissue.   I went through the usual protocol of a call back and ultrasound.

I saw the woman who did my second mammogram at the grocery store.  She saw me and a lot of panic crossed her face.  She hurried out of the aisle she saw me. It wasn't until she scurried away, I remembered who she was.  My heart sank. I still hoped that maybe it wouldn't be it.

It was.  When the radiologist told me I burst into tears and said I can't afford it.  I can't do this.  I thought I've struggled all of my life and I can't afford this.  I just couldn't.  

I got it together and did what I had to do.  I had the tests. I met with the doctors. I had the surgery.  I did every follow up that I had to do because I just had to do it.  I don't have a lot of people in my life but the few that I had needed me.  My mom.  My 4 year old cat.  My family in Florida.

I didn't want to go to sleep at night because I was afraid of not waking up when I got the news.  I stayed up and watched David Letterman until I fell asleep.  TV was my comfort during that time.

I may be had one good friend who was there when it all went down.  Everyone else?  Where do I begin?

Someone thought I should tell the group of people that I worked with about my situation so they could learn from me and not be like me.  WHAT?  

Getting a mammogram is something I didn't skip.  I'll cop to not getting my baseline mammogram until 36 but once I hit 40, I was on time every year, most of the time within a day of the previous one.  I didn't do anything wrong.  I do struggle from time to time thinking that I did something but to have someone else put the blame on me was insulting.  Nobody listened to me as it was and I'm not the poster girl for go get a mammogram.  I survived.  Then again, this is the same person who told me their favorite bumper sticker was Save the Ta Tas.  Vulgar and ignorant.

Cancer was a horrible thing but it's amazing how it reveals the other cancers in your life.  It's a liberating feeling to get rid of the other cancers of people who leave or people who just seem to want to step away from you.

I can't tolerate the scared people because I had to go to sleep a lot of nights scared myself.  Alone. I didn't have a lot of comfort and I would have loved it if I had more support.  It is what it is. I forgive but eh, who needs emotionally weak people around?  I don't need that.

I try to treat what happened like a job. There's more to my story that's not so pleasant like wanting to cry every time I see a bill come up, but that's not important.  I go to the cancer center once a month to get the Zoladex shot to ensure this doesn't happen again.

So despite all the tears, fears, bad times and bills, I made it another year.  That's pretty cool and I'll take that victory.