The Day That Changed Everything

We all have struggles in life, but recently when I was thinking about my own life, I realized that I have had it easy. I was born into a great family with parents who love me and believe in me, and have pretty much had what I want and need growing up. The most difficult thing I have ever had to deal with was the death of my dad after a battle with cancer, but again, having a close-knit, loving family helped to ease the pain during that very difficult time.

In light of this relatively easy life, the events of the past month have been crazy, emotional, and surreal. It started on August 12 when I had been feeling a little bit of soreness and pain in my right breast, and felt a lump. My automatic assumption, as someone with virtually no risk factors (no family history, no obesity, smoking, or drinking alcohol) was that it was nothing. Still, somehow it seemed different than the other 500 or so lumps you can usually feel in your breast tissue, so I called the doctor's office the next day and told them about it and they immediately ordered an ultrasound to check it out.

I went to American Fork Hospital on Wednesday, where the radiologist was unable to determine what the lump was after an ultrasound. He ordered a biopsy and a mammogram to check it out a little more, and a couple of hours later I left the hospital, again feeling like it was probably nothing. So it came as a pretty big shock when, the following Monday, I got a call from the doctor's office and the nurse said the "C" word--her exact words were "it is cancer."

Shock. Devastation. Tears. Fear.

I'm not really sure what I felt at that exact moment, but I was sitting in the parking lot at work, having just arrived at the office for the day, and I decided that I needed to compose myself and go into work. I was probably in shock at the time that I decided to go in to work, because I only made it about 2 hours before I had to get out of there and go home. The next few days were kind of a blur of being scared, crying, cuddling with Nick, and wondering about the future. As a 31-year-old woman who leads a relatively healthy life, this kind of news was the last thing I expected to hear.

I'm sure I spent way too much time on the internet over the next two or three days, researching, Googling, trying to find out everything I could about how someone like me ends up with this disease. While I believe the internet is a great place to find information, it's also one of the worst places to find information because you can quickly convince yourself that you are probably dying as you look at all the health websites out there (both reputable and not-so-reputable). The next step, though, was to get to the doctor and find out about what my options are.