Surviving Cancer - Writing what I know - Part 2
In my last post I talked about the discovery of my breast cancer. In this follow up post I want to write about what happened afterwards.
Just short of thirteen years ago, I found a lump in my breast. It took me nine months to have the lump removed and in that time it had doubled in size. To say the diagnosis was shocking is putting it mildly. No one expects to hear the words, "You have cancer".
When I went through my experience I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't tell my family or my friends what it was really like. I sugar coated the chemo treatments and didn't tell them how sick I was afterwards or how the mouth sores made it difficult to eat. I didn't tell them how afraid I was or how alone I felt. I didn't want them to worry. I realize now how much of a mistake that was. I should have let them comfort me and I needed to share what was happening to me.
In June of 2003, after I had finished my chemo and radiation and my hair was starting to grow back I saw an ad for the Komen 3-day 60 mile walk. It was exactly what I needed - to do something which sounded so difficult. I had been active throughout my treatments, forcing myself to the gym at least four times a week. It was part of how I felt in control of my health. But to walk sixty miles in three days seems crazy. It was that first event that changed my life - not being a cancer survivor.
I trained for months with women who were survivors, or whose lives had been touched in some manner by cancer. In October of that year I did my first sixty mile walk. That experience had more impact on me than anything I had ever done, or maybe ever will. Those wonderful women taught me how to share my experience and how doing it can help someone else. Learning that you can get through cancer and come out on the other side stronger.
I've done the walk a number of times over the years. Some years I volunteered as crew on the event and some years I walked it again. Yes, it was really hard. I walked every single mile plus the more than two hundred I walked to train for it. When my co-walkers felt tired or moaned about another hill to walk up I reminded them that it wasn't as hard as going through chemo.
I still have many friends from the years I was involved in the 3-Day walk. I consider myself lucky to have been able to participate when so many women have lost the battle against breast cancer. I lost my younger sister earlier this year to the lingering effects of it.
I hope that you are not touched by this disease, in any of its forms. I hope we find not a cure but a way to prevent it. I hope the number of women who lose their lives to breast cancer goes down instead of up. I hope that in sharing my story you see hope and the knowledge that it is possible to beat it.
Happy trails,
Leslie
Just short of thirteen years ago, I found a lump in my breast. It took me nine months to have the lump removed and in that time it had doubled in size. To say the diagnosis was shocking is putting it mildly. No one expects to hear the words, "You have cancer".
When I went through my experience I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't tell my family or my friends what it was really like. I sugar coated the chemo treatments and didn't tell them how sick I was afterwards or how the mouth sores made it difficult to eat. I didn't tell them how afraid I was or how alone I felt. I didn't want them to worry. I realize now how much of a mistake that was. I should have let them comfort me and I needed to share what was happening to me.
In June of 2003, after I had finished my chemo and radiation and my hair was starting to grow back I saw an ad for the Komen 3-day 60 mile walk. It was exactly what I needed - to do something which sounded so difficult. I had been active throughout my treatments, forcing myself to the gym at least four times a week. It was part of how I felt in control of my health. But to walk sixty miles in three days seems crazy. It was that first event that changed my life - not being a cancer survivor.
I trained for months with women who were survivors, or whose lives had been touched in some manner by cancer. In October of that year I did my first sixty mile walk. That experience had more impact on me than anything I had ever done, or maybe ever will. Those wonderful women taught me how to share my experience and how doing it can help someone else. Learning that you can get through cancer and come out on the other side stronger.
I've done the walk a number of times over the years. Some years I volunteered as crew on the event and some years I walked it again. Yes, it was really hard. I walked every single mile plus the more than two hundred I walked to train for it. When my co-walkers felt tired or moaned about another hill to walk up I reminded them that it wasn't as hard as going through chemo.
I still have many friends from the years I was involved in the 3-Day walk. I consider myself lucky to have been able to participate when so many women have lost the battle against breast cancer. I lost my younger sister earlier this year to the lingering effects of it.
I hope that you are not touched by this disease, in any of its forms. I hope we find not a cure but a way to prevent it. I hope the number of women who lose their lives to breast cancer goes down instead of up. I hope that in sharing my story you see hope and the knowledge that it is possible to beat it.
Happy trails,
Leslie
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