BREAST CANCER my doctor said. It was Sept 2023, I received the news a couple of days after getting hired as a permanent employee at my contracting job. I was having lunch with my husband as we were celebrating my permanent employment. What a sad blow in our celebration. I read about people hearing their diagnosis and feeling numb. But at that moment, I felt numb, mad, scared, confused, sad… all these emotions rushing in. I just wanted to scream, why me? My husband, who is in the military, was finally back after a long two and half years of deployment overseas. I am just starting to get my engineering career back on track after five years of being a stay at home mom. I worried about my kids. They are all so young. How will they take the news? It took me a few days to recover from all the mixed emotions. My husband and I decided to learn more about my diagnosis from my team of doctors before telling our kids. It was still very confusing. Everything felt rushed. Diagnosis of stage 1 er+ pr+ her2- DCIS , then lumpectomy, followed by a much worse diagnosis which brought me to stage 2 that required a mastectomy, then a final diagnosis of stage 3. I didn’t have time to breathe and take it all in. It was just go, go, go. We decided to have the “fighter face” in front of our kids and not show any worries. It worked in a way. My kids stood strong over the course of my treatment. We got through the treatment. I lived through it for my kids, my husband, and for ME.
It is now almost a year after cancer became a part of me. I mean it really doesn’t just go away even after the chemotherapy, the surgery, and the radiation. Surgeon said I am currently cancer free. Yes, they say I am “cured” at the moment though my body is still in recovery mode. My mind is still processing everything that happened the past year. I still worry about the future… the next five years really. But the journey through the experience made me a stronger person. It made me appreciate life, what I have now, and every moment with my kids and my husband. I have a better outlook about life, where I should not worry about little things. The less stress on my body the better. I look up at the sky more often and try to appreciate the world around me. In the environment we have now, we sometimes forget to live as we are all so engaged in working “to live”. But I realized, I need to live for me and my family, work will be there to finish the next day. Time goes by so fast and spending it with my family is a treasure no amount of money can replace.