Category Archives: Awareness

Things to look forward to.. Party!

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I have some great news… they agreed to let my next chemo be delayed for one day… til the 23rd, so that I can hopefully attend the fundraiser all our friends are planning for us…. Exactly 21 days away!!! Eeek!!!

My friends are keeping everything very secretive, so many surprises are in store… but I do know that it’s probably a great idea to reserve your tickets.. so I’ll post the link here… for you to reserve your tickets…

https://itrulycare.com/events/pink-is-the-new-black-fundraiser-for-dawn-gaddy

On January 21, my best friend arrives… and then I’ve got another very special surprise in store…. a photog that has taken the Charlotte market by storm… has decided to do a glam shoot for me. I’m unaware of any of the details…. so it should be interesting…. but I sure hope I feel beautiful because these days…. I haven’t felt so hot lately… If anyone can make cancer look amazing, it’s this photog…

I’ll have a day to play on the 22nd with my BFF and family…. Then the 23rd, I’ll have chemo….. The 24th in the morning I’ll have to have my Neulasta shot…. and then I imagine I’ll go get glammed up for the party….. I’m beyond excited…. I pray I’m in good enough shape to enjoy myself!!! I am just so grateful I’ll have an opportunity to be there….

Yesterday, we took a few pics…. after I had been already drugged up with Benadryl… and my cocktail of choice…. 😉 Only 4 more to go….

Always freezing… lol

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I’m looking forward to not shaving…. I’m looking forward to losing all my peach fuzz on my face…. a few stray whiskers that come with being 40+…. I’m looking forward to a new set of boobs…. 1. lets pray that chemo and mastectomy clear my margins… so maybe I don’t need radiation (unlikely, but I’ll be hopeful)… 2. I’ll most likely get a tummy tuck and/or a leg lift to make enough skin for them to work….  3.Once my hair grows back… I lose my puffy….. I’m thin from my new lifestyle…. which I will NEVER stop because I will NEVER allow my body to fail me like this again….. I could very well be one smoking 41/42 year old…… 😉 This is definitely something to look forward to…. Here’s to hoping!!!

After chemo yesterday… I feel like I’ve been steam trained…. nothing new…. nausea, my legs feel like elephants…. foggy headed…. but…. I’m 1/3 complete…. and closer to my goal…. being cancer free!!! ❤

I continue to thank all of the people in my life who are loving me and supporting me through this….. I’m so incredibly loved…. it’s so amazing… Love you all!

It’s a tearful day…

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Today, everything is making me cry…. but for good reasons. I feel like this…. Cancer… has forever changed me… It’s opened my eyes to something I never really even gave a 2nd thought. This disease was something that affected OTHER people…. I honestly never feared it, I never thought it would happen to me…. (like other things I’ve experienced in my life). I feel like my spirituality is at a new level, I know…. why does it take for something bad to happen before you turn to God…. ? I felt like I had forsaken him…. No, actually I just got really busy. I told Darrell that I feel like I can feel the prayers… when I think about God… my heart feels a warmness…. I can’t leave my house, I’m basically house bound…. but, I’ve never felt so at peace, so content….

And, then I see things…. things I NEVER paid attention to…. women with breast cancer and other cancers. Fighting for their lives… but inspiring others. I watched a woman sing her heart out after undergoing  her 8th chemo treatment yesterday…. she could barely breathe…. but, she wanted to sing Hero by Mariah Carey, to love and inspire other people. The tears…. just streamed down my cheeks…. Wow, just wow!

I was talking to a friend this morning and she said… there’s a reason that it’s me. I have a strong back bone, I have the ability to see the positive in a really bad situation… I’m not having a pity party, but just taking each day as it comes and in the midst of it all…. I’m meeting new people I’d never have met in my life…. I’m inspiring other women, connecting other women… who are battling this disease…. Maybe, she’s right? Out of this…. something positive is happening…. It’s making me appreciate everything. I appreciate my family…. I appreciate my husband… I appreciate my parents… I appreciate my Mother… I appreciate my friends….. I appreciate everything that everyone is doing for me… even the simplest of things to try to make this easier for me…. It’s amazing. Truly amazing. I’m paying attention to things I just didn’t take the time to see…. I watch my husband interact with our son…. He wakes up in the night while we’re up being silly… and takes the time to join us.. missing a little sleep… I’m really listening to my 4 year old and the things he says and does… and he’s just so freaking funny…. and says the cutest things and does some not so cute things, but he just can’t help but be cute….. I watch my older boys and how they interact with my husband and my 4 year old… and it just literally WARMS my heart….

In the midst of all the badness…. really bad things going on around everyone…. children taking their lives, friends losing long time friends… there has been a lot of death lately. I went to a funeral recently and I watched the people mourning and all I could think is…. “this cannot be my family, this cannot be my friends”…. Death although it doesn’t scare me…. it scares me how the people who love me would handle it…. so it makes me even MORE committed to improving my health… and doing whatever I can personally do to try to help this disease along… or actually stop it dead in it’s tracks….

I’ve been monitoring my tumor… it’s not getting smaller that I can tell…. but it’s also not getting larger. I wanted some miracle… like an instant reaction to chemo…. and see it like miraculously shrink…. It’s not. But… it’s not growing either…. and that’s a very good thing.  I’ve changed my diet dramatically… I’ve been eating a highly alkaline diet to hopefully stop the cancer from growing…. and I received my blood tests and I’m quite impressed… so I thought I would share on my blog.

I posted to Facebook this morning…

I received my blood work…. I’ve been doing the alkaline diet for 1 month prior to my blood results…. which is basically gluten free, sugar free, lots of alkalizing foods and veggies… I do eat chicken and fish which is neutral…. (some, not a lot)…. I’d lost 12 pounds from doing it prior to chemo…

My total cholesterol… 107 (<200), triglycerides… 45 (<200) my HDL was actually low at 50 (>60) my LDL 48 (<100) I think that is quite impressive…. 

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My whole focus and purpose has changed…. and it’s been so positive…amidst all the negative…. I just feel really happy. It’s such a good thing.

Also… I wanted to post something that has really helped this metallic copper taste in my mouth… Thanks to my friend Sharon….

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Awareness…

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I want to talk a little bit about my experience… I had my first mammogram at 39… I have very dense breasts…. If you’ve been told you have dense breasts…. it’s not a reason to be concerned, but it means that if you have something that is in there hiding, it may not show up on Mammogram… That’s the scary part…

In a book that I’m reading…

FACT:

On average it takes 100 days or more for a cancer cell to double in size. It takes about 10 years for cells to divide to a size that can be actually felt. – The EVERYTHING Health Guide to Living With Breast Cancer

That means… in my opinion…. when I went in April, what I felt…. was not a cyst. It was just not detectable on mammogram OR ultrasound… but it was most likely there…

This week when I went to my oncologist… he told me… if I’d have come and it was 1 cm… I probably would not even need chemotherapy, I’d take tamoxifen and I’d have a lumpectomy most likely and be on my way… That was a real blow to me… that means if I’d have been more aware… and I’d have said… hey, but I feel something, can we pursue this further… Maybe, they’d have caught it.

Fast forward to November… what I have going on… I honestly don’t know how I didn’t see it… because I was busy, that’s what I keep telling myself… Looking down on my breast, it doesn’t look different.. its when you’re looking at it straight on… which is why I noticed in the mirror… Which is why I guess they tell you EVERY MONTH, inspect your breasts IN FRONT OF A MIRROR…. I didn’t pay attention. They told me I was fine… I believed it… who wouldn’t WANT to believe it…

Now it’s SO big… I don’t know ultimately if their fact is truly a fact… because what I had in April is nowhere near like what I have now and it seems to be a ton bigger…. although it probably was more like 175 days… so maybe? Whatever…. that is scary! Now because of the size, I have to have chemo, I have to have a mastectomy… and most likely radiation… and I have to be on Tamoxifen for 10 years at least…

I’ve known a lot of people who’ve gone for their mammograms… and HECK YES!!!! If I’m creating awareness… at least through what I am going through… people are taking it seriously and getting checked… Another photog friend was called back after her mammo… and she was scared to death… luckily, they told her it was only a vein… I told her, to be her own advocate and keep feeling those breasts and ask them to re-check her in a few-6 months… Doctors are going to hate me… lol But, it’s serious… and if it can’t be detected on mammogram…. and that’s our gauge? We HAVE to be our own advocates… We know our bodies… we should speak for our own health.

So, when I went this past month…. My mammogram BARELY detected this LARGE tumor.. it’s 4cm and probably bigger by now… it’s had 30 more days to brew…. it’s visible outside the skin now… The ultrasound… showed a 1 cm something or other…. but it was because of how my breast is presenting that they really took this seriously…. The MRI was ultimately what showed the true size of the tumor…. and remember… with LOBULAR cancer… which I have both Invasive Lobular and Invasive Ductal… The lobular spreads like tentacles, it was compared to crabgrass… it spreads and weaves it’s way in there…. THAT cannot be detected on mammogram…. With all of the science and technology… there has to be a way to detect these things… before it gets to the point that it HAS to be treated with chemo…

Let me talk about my aunt Patty for a minute… she was a good girl, she went ON TIME for her yearly mammogram (unlike my Mom and my other aunt who’ve put theirs off for 6 additional months… tsk, tsk…. ;)… so she went for her mammogram and they saw a blip on the radar… she is post menopausal… so they took it seriously…. they couldn’t even see it on the ultrasound… they had to look and look and look and finally found it…. It was found… It was stage 0, but… she opted to have the breasts both removed.. and reconstructed, she did not need chemo and was able to reconstruct right away…. If you have to have cancer… that’s ideal… but because of the lobular, there’s a much higher incidence that it can come back in the other breast…. so she opted to have both removed… which was very smart. Ironically, this past summer…. we were there in Wisconsin and she showed me her prized jewels…. they look so NICE!!!! If at the end of all of this… I come out with a tummy tuck and a new set, I’ll be thrilled…. but with all I’m going through there’s a large chance my body will reject… let’s pray NOT!!!!

My point is… don’t put off your mammograms…. and if YOU feel something… don’t accept it’s “just a cyst” like I did….. if it has been there, potentially 10 years to reach this size??? I’m not sure that I believe that… but it’s been there longer than I realized… Their point in that is… we think it’s critical… get this thing out of me NOW!!! But, it’s really not that big of a crisis… you have time to make informed decisions…. I’ve been very much like… “c’mon… let’s get this moving… this thing is changing constantly” I’ve been documenting it and someday maybe I’ll be brave enough to put my boobs out there for all to see…. but this is a blog and children can see it…. so I don’t want to do that… plus, I don’t know who’s reading… BUT,  I think it would be very helpful and would help create awareness…. so maybe someday I will….

If one person reads this… just one person….. and her breasts are saved…. because of this awareness, everything I will go through is worth it…..

❤