LIFE…

…is NOT fair! You know the saying! As a child I hated hearing “life’s not fair” more than anything. As an adult, I almost equally dislike the saying, but mainly because I’m on the other end of it as a parent. Adulting isn’t to fair these days either! I’m confident I don’t need to tell any of you this news. The past year has tried many of us in many ways.

A couple weeks ago I started this blog post to honor a fellow 4th grade family that had to say goodbye to their wife and mother to Metastatic Breast cancer. She was diagnosed two years prior in 2019 and fought as hard as she could. I wish I had the chance, or took the time, to get to know her better as I’ve heard nothing but wonderful comments. Our youngest, Julia is classmates with her middle child (son). During the service, the Deacon that spoke gave a beautiful sermon that heavily touched upon the fact that “life’s not fair”. He said “Amy led a clean, healthy life, yet cancer still invaded her body” and gave many examples to the like. For someone like me, the BC survivor wearing bright pink at the funeral sitting in the pew with Julia and friends, listening to his sermon was difficult for many reasons. I was quite happy to have had a clothe mask on during the service to catch the plethora of tears streaming down my face. It was the first time I’ve found wearing a mask convenient. A built in tear-catching tissue & emotion hiding mask all in one ? My tears were for her family & friends but I also realized they were tears for fear (no, not the 80’s band). This cancer shit’s for real and both scares me and pisses me off simultaneously! There’s to much of it everywhere and it feels like there’s no end in sight, which is quite daunting.

When someone first hears confirmation they have cancer the mind immediately goes to death. Although we all know that is NOT the case for many, yet it takes a minute to get to that realization. During that funeral, it became more of a fear that one day this evil disease could come back to get me. To say “Life isn’t Fair” is so cliche, but profoundly true. When a young person is taken to early without rhyme or reason, it leaves us angry and full of many emotions.

The past few years though, has thought me that the lack of fairness in life often equates to opportunities for growth and lessons learned and taught. If life was a continuous easy stroll in the park, what would (or could) we gain internally? How would we determine if we have any grit to fight, or strength to pick ourselves up when knocked to the ground? Sometimes we don’t realize what we have within us until we’re forced to find it.

Well, unfortunately, I too am being forced to find my inner fight…AGAIN! Wednesday it was confirmed that a tiny lump that I felt on my chest wall is a recurrence of my previously diagnosed, invasive ductal carcinoma. Yes, I did have a DOUBLE mastectomy and 16 rounds of chemo! Apparently it only takes 1 cell and this mo-fo cell is quite stubborn and good at playing hide-n-go-seek! The labs, scans etc completed after my surgery December 2018 showed clean margins which is quite frustrating to say the least.

So, here I go again, hitting the do-over button on kicking cancers ars because I obviously didn’t have the correct boxing gloves on before. It’s Friday, May 7th and my week thus far has entailed the following:

✅ ultrasound – to examine the lump I felt and see if looks suspicious

✅ biopsy – to cut out a piece of the mass, send to labs and confirm is cancer

✅ Chest MRI – this is to image both re-constructed breasts and chest wall to confirm no other annoying cells decided to grow into a tumor. This also SUCKED! You’re literally laying face down like on a massage table but your tata’s are hanging down and basically positioned in a loose vice. Your arms are up with a “panic ball” in one hand and IV in another (for contrast) and a cushion-less board where you lay your chest. The ear plugs go in, headphones with music of your choice go on and you lay STILL for anywhere from 3-9 minutes per picture while faintly hearing 2000’s pop music through the loud noises of the MRI machine. A couple times I legit felt like my insides were magnetic and bouncing around. I know i did this before but forgot how cray it felt.

✅CT of chest/abdomen/pelvis with & without contrast ~ to rule out anything in the organs.

✅Bone density scan ~ to rule out anything in bones.

The last two tests listed above were back-to-back today and took up most of the day. I arrive at 12:30pm, get settled, 1pm I chug 1/3 of a bottle of water with iodine, another 1/3 at 1:30pm…time to pee! 2pm, down goes the last 1/3 of the iodized liquid. At 2:30pm I stroll down the hall for the CT and pray my organs look as darling and clean as can be during this “photo-shoot”. Once finished, I’ll get dye injected in my IV and do a head to toes bones scan. Now it’s the waiting game on the results of all.

Regardless, I’ll most likely be lit up like a Griswald Christmas tree tonight glowing in the dark while I sleep from all the “contrast” liquids and radioactive machines scanning me all day. That, or I’ll become spider-woman, save the world and cure cancer. (hmmm…is that a movie yet?).

I now bid you farewell and Happy FOMO-Friday! This week has been exhausting mentally & physically. Continued support, prayers & positive thoughts are all very welcome as I start this damn journey again. I shall keep y’all updated via this blog and/or Facebook. I might even get lazy and turn the written words into oral with video via youtube…who knows ??‍♀️

One thing I know for sure is PLEASE no sympathy, sadness, or moping is allowed! I may have some seriously shitty luck, but my glass will always be 1/2 full?