Cancer. The big C. An unpredictable beast. When it first invades you, you don’t even know it. It’s a creeper alright… like a lizard, it silently creeps up on you and before you know it…it’s living off the cells in your own body. All the while growing and becoming more menacing. By the time you notice it, it’s a lump or mass that’s formed inside your body- somewhere.
Then you ask the question:
WHY ME?
If you are a woman like me who was diagnosed with breast cancer you are the unlucky one out of eight that are diagnosed each year. Or should I say the lucky one.
Did you know that… Breast cancer has to divide 30 times before it can be felt. Up to the 28th cell division, neither you nor your doctor can detect it by hand. With most breast cancers, each division takes one to two months, so by the time you can feel a cancerous lump, the cancer has been in your body for two to five years.
Then you ask yourself more questions:
Out of all the diseases why cancer? Why breast cancer?
What was I doing three, four, five years ago that would make me get cancer?
Is God telling me something ? Am I supposed to learn something?
Is that what cancer does…does it teach us something that we are supposed to learn and haven’t yet?
Then you say OK let’s get on with it.
The tests, the surgeries, the chemo, the radiation.
Let’s just do it so I can get back to my life.
Then you reflect you look inward and everything just changes.
You think of your life and its purpose.
You think of the people and things you might not see ever again.
You think of your first loves, and your current loves.
You think of just getting through the day.
You think “can I possibly get beyond this?
Then something shifts.
You start to notice little things like birds singing, and you revel in it.
You stop and notice things you didn’t before… Like the deep blue color of your husbands’ eyes, and the seasons changing like it’s a miracle.
You are happy to be alive, to have your taste buds return and your eyelashes back.
You spend time with people you love and don’t apologize for doing things you don’t want to do.
You live for today.
You break out your old camera and capture the beauty all around.
You are thankful for awakening with energy and hair on you head.
You make your health-your life a priority because it was almost taken away.
You live.
You laugh.
You love.
