Let the games begin

Ok.  I just did it.  I took the steps to start my first blog.  I am doing it as a way of balancing all the negative thoughts and liberating my voice.  I matter and I have a voice and as friend of mine would say, "give me the mic."  

I decided to do an online blog when my surgery for my cancer treatment was delayed several weeks.  I was originally scheduled for surgery September 22nd (a day before my 35th birthday) but because of paperwork issues with my employer and the insurance company, my insurance was cancelled and I was unable to make my necessary doctor's appointments and subsequently; no surgery.  I am now waiting for my surgery to take place October 13, 2010.  Things have been straightened out with my insurance and since I have some time on my hand, I decided to do a little blogging.  Breast cancer awareness month is next month so I wanted to honor the lives of many women who have survived breast cancer and pay homage to their, as well as my own personal, struggle.

I am an overachiever.  I have a type A personality and I drive family and friends, crazy!  I am a perfectionist and if I could afford therapy I am certain I would make a therapist very rich.  I have what others would call, issues.  I have to know everything and be in control.  It is me.  It makes me who I am and I have been like this for as long as I can remember.  It took some time to come to the place of acceptance of who I am.  I have had to deal with my own self-doubt and self-loathing on top of everyone else's criticism.  What helped me to settle into an appreciation of who I am is when I embraced the fact that I was "fearfully and wonderfully made."  Like Julia Robert's character said in Pretty Woman, it was very easy for me to believe the negative things others said about me but when I started to believe God's report I realized that I can no longer honor the God in me if I hated myself so much.

So what it is like to be me.  Well, it can be a little unnerving.  Imagine an alarm clock that never goes off.  Even more, imagine the energizer bunny that just keeps going and going.  My insatiable need to know everything causes me to always be on 10.  Even my down moments are filled with thoughts of what I can do next.  I want to fix everything and everyone so I am constantly coming up with ways in which to do that.  But today, as I face my own journey of being treated for breast cancer, a lot of who I am is changing.

July 20, 2010 I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  My older sister was diagnosed in 2007 and in 2008 I had surgery to have a benign lump removed.  Here it is two years later and another nodule was found in the same breast.  This time it was diagnosed as an invasive ductal carcinoma.  It is very small and we caught it in its early stage.  I plan to have surgery to have it removed but it will not be the simple lumpectomy as was originally planned.  With my BRCA results showing that I have a positive BRCA2 gene mutation, a decision was made to have a bilateral mastectomy.  My BRCA2 positive result means that I have an 84% chance of developing a second cancer in the same breast or the other.  I made a decision to be proactive and increase the quality of my life and schedule the surgery.  I haven't had it yet but am feeling pretty empowered because of the decision I made for me.  I will not know if I need radiation or chemotherapy until after the breasts are evaluated but at this moment I stand in the peace of knowing I will be around for my children as a result of this decision.  Until next time.

Tasha