What I find hardest throughout this journey is the WAITING. Waiting to hear if the margins are clear . . . if I let it, my mind can take me places I don’t need to go. I’m trying to follow Natalie’s advice to stay in the moment. Thinking ahead and worrying about the different scenarios won’t help. Don’t let in the negative. I have to work very hard at staying focused but I find when I do, I’m much calmer.
When I received this diagnosis I began a lot of soul searching. I had been working on myself for years and my thoughts shifted – what I used to think was important no longer was, anger at small things was no longer important, I learned to look at things in gratitude. I read this somewhere and it became my reality: When you intentionally divert your attention to gratitude and appreciation you’re not only feeling better, You’re literally changing the content of your thoughts, and, in so doing, you create the opportunity to change your reality. I was determined to find gratitude in my journey with the Big C.
I receive a call from Dr. Ruark – it’s not quite the news I want. Five of the six margins are clear but one margin comes back with a different kind of cancer – Invasive lobular carcinoma. When I hear the word invasive my stomach drops – up to this point I’ve been told it’s contained. I’ve got two types of cancer in the same area. I have more cancer. Really?
Dr. Ruark tells me I will need another lumpectomy with removal of lymph nodes. The good news is the lobular carcinoma is only 1.1 milliliters. I was extremely lucky – a great pathologist caught it. I’m not happy to have to have another lumpectomy or the fact that they've found more cancer, but I quickly check myself and think about the woman I saw that day in Dr. Ruark’s office who was at stage 4. I'm in gratitude, this is just another bump in the road on my cancer journey.
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