HAPPY cancer-VERSARY to ME!

Two years of LIVING life to the fullest, enveloped and supported by those who love me.  Cause for celebration for anyone, anytime! For sure for me when you flip the pages of my story back two years.

What date to choose for the start of this journey?  Hmmm… When I first felt ill, or maybe when I developed that cough, cough?  Nope, not then…I didn’t know then.  Okay, so maybe the Sunday I had the life-saving X-ray, or  the Tuesday I got the call (while at lunch with my granddaughter) that I needed a CT scan because of “something” the radiologist saw on that X-ray.  Could be then, but nope.  Must be pneumonia or something. Ah ha!  Got it!  Not just the date, but the exact moment.

The day this journey began was Thursday, January 7, 2016.  Dan and I were sitting in an exam room, and my PCP knocked and entered slowly, too slowly.  It was a surreal moment.  The expression on her face showed everything I didn’t want to know.  It was kind of like in the movies whenever the doctor says there’s no hope, only sadder, and real; too sad, too real.  Her sad voice broke as she explained that I had a mass in my left lung hilum.  I asked if it could be anything other than cancer, even before she said it was.  She slowly shook her head,  and not wanting to give me false hope said, “No, not really.  There really isn’t anything else it could be.”  And then, after processing the news for just a few seconds, we went on to lay out a plan to first get a diagnosis.  That’s it.  Yup.  That’s the day.  Thursday, January 7, 2016, approximately 9:50 AM.

And thanks to medical researchers, research doctors, the incredible staff at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (go there the second there is a cancer diagnosis), the prayers, well wishes, and positive thinking of many, and the support of those who love me, HERE I am!! Not just alive, but living!!

Loving LIFE with Dan, our family, the three little dachshunds, and Dottie and Matilda, the Nigerian Dwarf Goats.  Finding (and spreading I hope) JOY in the everyday, every day.  Content. Happy.  Satisfied.  A meaningful life, filled with HOPE.