I quickly learned that I should probably not visit my doctors without support. One of the first visits with my oncologist, my sister Sandra went with me. The wait felt endless; there was heaviness in the air. The waiting room was crowded with patients waiting for a miracle. When we finally made it to the back, the room was cold, except for a small heater near the floor. My oncologist was great, in that she didn’t sugar coat anything. My cancer was aggressive and so the treatment had to be aggressive. “You will lose all of your hair.” The room blurred, my eyes heavy with tears. I looked over at my sister, smiled, and we both cried.
AUGUST 2024
I was determined to fight, to claw my way out at the end, to be unstoppable. My husband lingered in that suffocating waiting room for hours. I remember the “red devil” as patients and doctors alike call it, creeping through my veins, creating a burning sensation from my toes to the tips of my hair. I dozed off and woke up startled, forgetting where I was, in a cold room that suddenly had all the air sucked out of it. I was on fire; I could feel it. The nausea coursed through me and I began to hyperventilate. That was my welcome to chemotherapy. How would I survive the next 5 sessions, one every 3 weeks?
Two Weeks Later…
Fourteen days was all that it took. I was in the shower and globs of my hair were tangled in my fingers. I sobbed quietly, for fear that my kids would hear me. It was a gentle release, and it had finally hit me. I told myself that I needed to be strong. Hair is just hair, right? I could make it work. I needed to make it work. For my kids. I called my teenage daughters to the bathroom, grabbed my husband’s electric shaver, and had my girls shave the rest of my head. I tried on some wigs, made a TikTok, and embraced my newly bald head.
The hair loss came quickly but the bone pain was unrelenting torture. With each session my joints yearned for any relief from the bone-crushing pain. My entire body shook with aches. The nausea persisted, until my body caved and released anything I had managed to eat. I would lose 12 pounds in 5 days every 3 weeks.
But life moved like a steady river current. I continued to work full-time, I went to my daughter’s football games (she was a cheerleader), I dressed up for Halloween. I needed to be strong. I was strong. A few bad days are just that, right?
December 2024
Because I’m such an overachiever, and have the BRCA2+ mutation, I was at a significantly higher risk of developing ovarian cancer in the future. With my bilateral mastectomy looming, I had a decision to make. One week before Christmas, I had a mastectomy, lymph node removal, a full hysterectomy, and an oophorectomy. It didn’t hit me until surgery day that I would no longer be able to have biological children. But I also felt a sense of guilt. Too many women lose the opportunity to ever bear children because of my diagnosis, and here I was crying because I could never naturally have another child. Did I feel blessed because I was able to have four children? Yes. Does the idea that the choice of having another child was taken away still hurt? Also, yes.
Through this process I’ve had to grieve my body and its constant changes. How do I navigate my emotions while still being sensitive to others’ journeys? How can I heal without hurting others? How am I able to move on while others cannot?
February 2025
While I had assumed my surgery would be the end of it, my lab results had detected a tiny cancer cell. This meant I now had to do 25 rounds of radiation; 5 consecutive weeks. What most people do not understand is that the side effects from chemotherapy, surgeries, and radiation endure. Here I was with medically induced menopause, memory loss, joint pain, nausea; and now we were adding skin changes and chronic fatigue to the mix. I felt like a literal zombie every day; slow-paced, groggy, incoherent. On day 25, I told the tech, thanks for everything, but I hope I never see you again.
August 2025
Fast forward to six months later and I had my first of many reconstructive surgeries. I am currently scheduled for reconstructive surgery number four this summer. While I have had a great support system, the hardest part has been the lack of awareness and education around breast cancer. Everyone knows someone who had it, passed from it, but that’s it. Women (and men – because they can get it too) are not getting checked enough. We aren’t having enough conversations about it. People don’t understand the mental and physical toll that cancer and its treatments continue to have on a person years after a diagnosis. It’s not a free boob job, yes, everything still hurts, yes, I’m still on medication, yes, it can still come back.
Family
Throughout treatment everyone told me how positive I was, I always had a smile on my face. I kept working, I kept showing up for my kids and my family, I made new friends. I smiled on the outside, but I was in pain on the inside. And life after cancer, it’s just getting started.
