A Sea of Information

I feel like I’ve suddenly been thrust into student mode…learning everything I can about breast cancer diagnosis, treatment and options, patholgy and recovery.  I am waking early and reading reading reading (and as many of you know I am not a “reader”).  I spend my free time “doing” with my hands most of the time.  There are so many resources and I am trying to filter through and decide upon.  Educating ourselves about this now has become a full time endeavor, and time is of the essence because in 2 weeks from tomorrow I will go into surgery….Second guessing is not an option right now.  I have to trust that God has placed me into the hands of the right doctors and Tim and I talked a lot about the physicians we met with last Friday and we both feel very good about where I am being seen.  The only question would have been if the patholgy report hadn’t come back showing cancer.  Then I would have wondered and wanted to ask someone else’s opinion but once cancer has been found there’s a pretty general course of action to take.  Some patients may have certain treatments before others, or a different combination of drugs, but all in all, cancer is treated with the same basic guidelines.  It all depends on where in the spectrum I fall, but be that as it may, I have fallen into the “cancer category”.  The MRI tomorrow will guide us further as to the “detail” of surgical treatment (how much how far, how wide, how deep, etc) , but the other treatments (chemo and radiation) are insurance against further cancer cells elsewhere in the body and recurance, and are standard for whichever type or stage cancer I end up showing after patholgy from surgery comes back. I have come to this conclusion by reading a lot of information put out there by reputable cancer organizations and talking with other cancer patients. 

As for eduating friends and family, I recommend a great web site called Circus of Cancer where you can learn how to support us emotionally.  Also www.BreastCancer.org where there is a lot of detail about the disease and answers to lots of questions. 

I feel upset when I begin to dwell on what lies ahead, even if that just means realizing I can’t be at Kelli’s volleyball game tomorrow.  Those are the little things that I hate about having cancer.  Spending so much time reading and going to doctor appointments that I get behind on everything else in my life that I use to do daily. One day at a time I keep telling myself.  I went to church this morning and it was so refreshing and uplifting.  The worship music touched my heart (thanks Cheryl and Page and Jim!) and at one point the pastor said something in the Bible story in Matthew 5:36 referring to the fact that no man can change his hair black or white (well, not without chemicals, anyways) and he said even God owns our hair!  And I thought, wow, I needed to hear that with my fears of hair loss right now. It (I), everything belongs to Him!

If you have called me or e-mailed me and haven’t heard back from me PLEASE don’t take it personally….I just can’t answer every one right now and it doesn’t mean that I don’t want you to contact me.  Please keep it up because those are what’s keeping me going right now and lifting my sad spirit.

PRESSED BUT NOT CRUSHED!  2 Corinthians 4:7-10:

   ⁷ We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure.   This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

   ⁸ We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. ⁹ We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. ¹⁰ Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.