Long weekends are wonderful…. unless you’ve had a phone call at 4:30 on Friday that your surgical oncologist wants to see you back in their office…. after having a conversation with your oncologist…  I couldn’t get in until Wednesday… I imagine it means one of several things… 1. They want to change my treatment plan… 2. The oncologist saw something they didn’t… 3. My scans are in…  She said it wasn’t because of my scans… so it’s probably one of the first two…. and boy does that make me nervous. Last night, I was grumpy… mad at the world… The stages of grief are shock/despair/anger…. and I went into anger mode…. I know it’s not healthy… so the best thing I could do is go to bed.

3:15am – Greyson wakes up having a coughing fit…. We both got up and were trying to calm him down with breathing treaments, vicks, meds… he managed to get a few more hours in and now we’re all up….

Unfortunately, I was awoken by a really bad dream…. I  never have bad dreams… very, very rarely….

Today, we’ll be having a lazy day… for the most part. I need so badly to get caught up on some work. I’ve been trying…. but between visits, phone calls, appointments, texts, Facebook messages…. I’m not accomplishing much and it seems these days… I’d rather not work…. but I really have to! So hopefully I will get some stuff done today.

Tonight, my husband has planned a dinner… for me… with bunches of friends and family. He’s calling it  a Cancer Party…. but it’s really just dinner…. but it should be a lot of fun! Grammy will watch Greyson for a little bit… hopefully he has a better night tonight….  And, hopefully I can keep it together….I haven’t cried in a day or so…  Darrell wants me to have a good time before I start treatment…. if that’s my plan now. My thought is… maybe the Oncologist wants me to have surgery first? Then chemo? And radiation? What I don’t understand… is they told me on the phone that I have cancer… so I can’t imagine they can tell me anything as bad as that….

Anyway… there probably won’t be a lot to report on the weekend… and if there is… I’ll get back on…. but I plan to take this long weekend…. to just be…. and try to make some peace out of all of this….

Yesterday, we were at the surgical oncologist for a good little bit… I had so many people texting, calling…. worried. I put on my brave face and told my story at least 10 different times yesterday….

This morning… I woke up in tears… My husband and I just laid together talking about it all…. It’s all very surreal…

This morning. I’m mourning…. I’m mourning the loss of my hair, I will never again complain about my hair… or wanting to cut it or dye it or whatever I’ve ever complained about in the past… I’m also mourning the loss of my breasts… and more than anything, I pray my husband still thinks I’m beautiful…. it’s going to be a long time coming before I have the reconstructive process… it appears almost a year and a half… and then that takes awhile…

Tuesday I will be cutting my hair off…. to prepare… I want to prepare mostly my littlest son… and I don’t want it to be such a shock when my long hair starts to fall out… so I was going to do a bob, but now I’m thinking more like a pixie…. it will only be there for a few more weeks… and then it will be gone for six months…

I pray that I tolerate chemotherapy well. I pray that I tolerate radiation well…. but I thoroughly appreciate what the doctor is trying to do… by saving my arms.. potentially… if you’ve seen lymph edema… it’s not something you want if you can at all avoid it.

I think when people see me getting down, they think they need to remind me that I will be ok…. I know I will be ok, I know I’m a strong person…. I just need to get my feelings out and this is all part of the process. If I don’t grieve the loss, that is unhealthy…. they told me… tears are absolutely part of this process…

Anyway, I have lots to do today…. I need to clear my plate of what I have left…. Many thanks to DeLayna Kenney McCallum from D. Kenney Imaging and Levi J. Wiggins from www.photographersedit.com for helping me make this possible.

First off I’ll update about the right breast…. it did not have cancer.. YET… but it has the cells that lead to cancer, but she was not confident with the biopsy results and wants to biopsy again… more on this part later… She sat and showed me my mammograms from 2012 and April 2013… you could not see anything… they looked identical… then she put this past one up and she said ONLY because she knows… could she locate a tiny blip on the mammogram… This is VERY scary!!! I only went because I felt something… what I felt didn’t even show up on the mammogram last April…. And what I have this year… was barely detectable… and only because she knew where to look… she saw something VERY small, not nearly the size the tumor actually is…

The ultrasound showed like a 1.2cm area of concern.. it was the MRI that showed the tumor being 4cm.. she said by the time they would do a lumpectomy it would be half of my breast… so, she would recommend a mastectomy on the left breast… well, we said if my right breast is going to get cancer in 6 months, 1 year… 5 years… we don’t want to go through this again… so, we’ll go ahead and do a double mastectomy… so she said the biopsy would not be necessary in that case… So, her suggested course of treatment… Chemotherapy for 6 months – 1 month off – double mastectomy – 1 month off – 6 weeks of radiation… 6 months off… and 8 months of being flat chested… and then I can begin the reconstruction process… 😦 I will be on a drug for 5 years called Tamoxifen… to reduce my hormones… and this will put me in instant menopause…

She told me that clinically I’m a stage 2… but, it could be different after surgery… She said… she could go ahead and do the surgery first… but, that may actually upstage me… to a stage 3 or 4… but the course of treatment would be no different UNLESS the cancer has spread… and over the next week I will have testing to make sure of that… lots of appointments upcoming. She feels good that it has not…  But, if she does the surgery first.. that means they will have to take all of my lymph nodes under that arm and potentially under the right arm as well… that would be determined during the surgery… based upon pathology findings… But, if she removes all the lymph nodes.. I will end up with lymphedema… which makes the arm swell 2-3X the size…. So her theory is do chemotherapy first.. (Yes I will lose my hair)… and shrink the tumors as much as possible first.. and hopefully reduce the amount of lymph nodes affected… so that maybe 3-4 might have to come out and not all of them (that will be determined at the time of surgery)…

Over the next week… I will have a bunch of scans, bone, body… etc… I will have some baseline tests on my heart to make sure my heart can take chemo… I will have genetic testing to see if it’s a gene mutation. If it is… then my kids are at risk of certain cancers… If it is from a genetic mutation… they will actually do a hysterectomy so that it prevents all hormones from being created in the body since it’s hormone driven… I will also see the Medical Oncologist and start treatment probably within the next week – 10 days.. I’ve been asked how I’m emotionally holding up… I’m doing ok…  I feel better about everything… of course this is not going to be any fun at all… I have no idea what my future holds… but I’m sure feeling much more confident that I can beat this.. I’ll be documenting my entire journey… because it’s so therapeutic for me… I feel like I am a fairly strong person and I can get through it, with a little hand holding from God… and my family.

On another note… I’d love to thank Kymm McLean for allowing me to use her juicer… I plan to juice a lot… to get the most nutrients from my foods as possible… I’ve stopped drinking alcohol, coffee, eating any refined sugars… etc… Additionally, I’ve changed my diet to an alkaline driven diet… to hopefully stop the cancer from growing… In doing this, I’ve started drinking Kangen water… which is alkaline… I started using natural deoderant, which doesn’t work… when using the 8.5… I still had body odor… but since switching to the 9.0 my body odor has almost gone away… It’s going to be a long, unpleasant year…. (plus)… I don’t know if I’m ready to lose my hair… I don’t know if I’m ready to look at my flat, unattractive chest…. but these are only temporary things… which I am reminded by so many… So many people I need to thank…. Diane Esposito has been literally a rock for me through this… my husband & family of course…. Kymm McLean… who has assured me she will show me how to draw brows and attach lashes… Katie O’Neil who plans to attend my big hair cut next week… Amelia Old & Monica Brady Reid who worked so hard to help me find help with editing… Amelia has offered to attend chemo with me… Diane too…. Athena who has graciously helped provide meals… Sharon from Total Tranquility Salon for helping me with my Kangen Water and delivering it to my door….Ines from Sky’s The Limit Cakes… she sends me daily thoughts and prayers….  So many people… I’m probably forgetting… Thank you… forever, from the bottom of my heart!!!!

I pray that my story…. will encourage every single woman who is 30 and above… to ask their doctor for a mammogram… 30 is the new 40 in my opinion for breast cancer… obviously it does not discriminate… I see 17 & 18 year old girls on these message boards who have it… 😦

Every person who’s looked at me… assures me… what I have now was not there in April. I am not convinced. They said it was cysts…Maybe if it was a completely different location, the opposite side… but this is the EXACT same location as last April…  Well… and what they saw yesterday they thought was a cyst too…. and it wasn’t. But it did look like a cyst on ultrasound. It may come back benign… and if so… FABULOUS… but I told them yesterday… one breast or two, it doesn’t matter… because these are coming off. My cancer is a hormone based cancer… I will not take any chances…

Get your mammogram… if it’s all clear… Great! But, if they see ANYTHING… have them stick a needle in it! The biopsy really wasn’t that painful… I couldn’t lift for 2 days… I used ice packs.. never even took a tylenol! My motto… better safe than sorry. And all of the ultrasound techs have said the same thing….

I was at my family doctor earlier today… and she took a lot of time to talk to me… I think I have bronchitis at the moment…. anyway… she said that Asian countries do not have breast cancer and she credits our fabulous American diet to why we do! Think of how different… veggies, rice… broths, tofu… little meats… little refined sugars…. which is why there is such a high occurrence here in the US.

Repeat after me… if they see anything… be your own advocate and tell them… Stick A Needle In It!!!!

###4 words a woman never wants to repeat in her life…. but wait… I have no maternal history… but I breastfed my kids…. I shouldn’t have breast cancer, I’m too young…

But… I have breast cancer….

Last March, 2013… I found some lumps… I got into my doctor… I pushed my mammogram up and I got in fairly quickly… April, 2013… they scheduled me for diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound…. The radiologist on staff, quickly told me… you’re fine.. just some cysts… come back in a year! I was thrilled!!!! I didn’t give it another thought…

November 6, 2013… I’m a wedding photographer. I’m busy… extremely busy in the heart of wedding season. I have a 4 year old…  when I bathe, he bathes… I’m generally concerned about him… hop in, hop out… I don’t take time to inspect. So.. I have no idea how long it’s been there… But, I happened to capture a glimpse of myself in the mirror and was like… what in the heck is that?! I sent my husband a pic, my Mom a pic… they agreed. I needed to go in. I went in the next day to my family doctor… she ordered me another mammogram and ultrasound. They didn’t want to get me in until November 21. I called that Friday and was like listen… my breast is really strange… and this is the same location it was last April…. and a nice lady named Jennifer said…. Can you come in today at 2:30.  YES!

Many things were different about this appointment… they took much longer, asked me questions like “are your breasts always this hard”, etc… The radiologist came in and HE also checked me out via ultrasound… and he told me, that he was VERY concerned… these were huge changes from the last mammogram. He told me other things, it was a blur… I asked him to please explain to my husband. He did… and he said, he does not think that anything benign would cause the nipple to cave in like it was… and cause the dimpling in the skin…

I had a very long weekend and a wedding ahead of me… which was probably good because I kept occupied. I had a biopsy scheduled for the following Tuesday.

November 14th, 2013… I get the phone call…. Are you in a place where you can talk? My heart sank…. I knew it. She said… Dawn, we found Invasive Ductal Carcinoma and Invasive Lobular Carcinoma. It’s also in your lymph node… We will have someone to call and have you scheduled for Surgical Oncologist…because this will require chemo and surgery. I got off the phone… and bawled my eyes out… My husband quickly came to me and we just cried….

November 15th, 2013… I had an MRI… my whole family.. minus Greyson came along with me to support me. I thought we would get some answers…. We were on the car ride home and the phone rang…. We found some lumps in your right breast and we need you to go in and have them analyzed… which I was scheduled  for today… and I am awaiting the results… We know that your cancer is estrogen/progesterone related.. They will have you undergo genetic testing… We know that one of the tumors is 3.8cm and the other is in your lymph node. We will not know how many lymph nodes it has affected until we remove them. I quickly messaged my doctor who explained it all and graciously advocated for me.. when they tried to tell her they didn’t have availability… she said.. NO… you need to get her in Monday (today). They do not believe that I had this back in April.. although I am not convinced…. they said it’s just a very aggressive form of cancer…

I don’t know the stage, yet… I will go to my surgical oncologist on Wednesday to hopefully have more answers… My results from today’s tests from the right breast should be in by then…. and I pray we have a course of action…

Today’s findings… they thought the lump was a cyst… but it wasn’t. It would not aspirate…. so they biopsied it… and we will know those results hopefully Wednesday…

I plan to document my journey… and hopefully educate and create awareness for other women… and I plan to beat this… I have kids. I have a husband who loves me very much. I have parents who need me… I have friends who love me….

I’m scared. Petrified actually… I told my husband… I know I have cancer. Other than a chest cold… I feel fine. A little tired maybe more than usual… but I feel fine. I don’t know if I am even prepared for what is to come. I didn’t realize you lose your eyelashes and eyebrows.. just didn’t occur to me… I thought you lost the hair on your head. We are probably going to have both breasts taken… everyone tells me this is what I should do… and hopefully have them reconstructed… if possible. But, am I prepared to go through the loss of my breasts? I honestly don’t know…. but to keep my spirits up and to keep my mind clear… this will be my outlet….

I am still wrapping my head around all of this… some moments I’m fine.. the next I’m crying…. My eyes are very puffy these days… lots of crying… then laughing… then more crying…. it’s just so surreal….