Yesterday during conversation… it was brought up, can you imagine if someone had told you last year…. at this time…. that…..

• You would be diagnosed with Stage 3 Breast Cancer
• You will completely change your lifestyle
• You will lose 30lbs and be thinner than you have ever been in your entire life, except maybe when you were 12
• You will have gone through chemo
• You will have people help you in ways you never imagined
• You will have new friends like you never ever possibly imagined
• You will have lost all your hair, every stitch of hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes
• You will have had a double mastectomy and have some sort of resemblance of breasts
• You will not mind losing your own breasts
• You will love having no hair and you’ll decide to keep a very short buzz cut… dyed platinum
• You will be forced into medical menopause
• You’ll have had a pulmonary embolism
• You’ll have taken countless courses of antibiotics
• You’ll take blood thinners
• You will have insomnia from chemo
• You will be half way through radiation
• You will not be a photographer anymore
• You will have to give up your studio
• You will give up your photography business completely
• You will have a new job working with a caterer
• They will LOVE you A LOT!
• You will walk almost every single day and you’ll look forward to it
• You won’t drink anymore alcohol (is it possible?)
• You will give up sugar completely (unthinkable)
• You won’t eat hardly any meat except maybe some fish and occasionally some organic chicken
• You’ll drink your coffee with only cream & coffee will be your new found treat
• You won’t eat any wheat or gluten
• Your best friend and her family will move across the country to live near you and you’ll see each other almost every day
• You will have a circle of friends you may not have even known before
• You will have a condition that causes your arm to swell from breast cancer
• You will hardly be able to recognize certain aspects of yourself, your strength, your determination, your fears will subside, you are more able to conquer things
• You will hardly be able to remember things as simple as “don’t forget to pick up the dry cleaning” – thanks to chemo brain
• You will have to wear glasses because you will have lost vision due to chemo
• You will learn to love blue
• AND PINK!
• You will make it a focus to make sure people have an awareness about breast cancer
• You’ll need to have a hysterectomy because the medication caused a pulmonary embolism
• You will have to use your butt to make new boobs because you will have no other fat on your body
• You will have a completely new perspective on life, what matters most, what doesn’t matter at all
• Your family and friends will be never have been  more important to you in your life
• You will have learned things about yourself never imaginable.
• You will have a restored faith in humanity
• You will realize that there are things in life that happen, sometimes really bad things and you realize that this is a part of change and as horrible as it can be… you learn to adapt and it becomes a part of who you are… but it doesn’t define you.

My newest change…