It was my 30th birthday, a day that I should be celebrating, but rather I was sitting in a doctor’s office hearing the words anyone would dread, you have cancer. It was not the first time I heard those words as I was the sole caregiver for a family member (Mike) who was diagnosed 5 months earlier with stage 4 melanoma.
It seemed like it took forever to get to the diagnosis as I was a completely a healthy 29-year-old with no medical history. None of the doctors wanted to go there, but once the diagnosis came, time seemed to speed up. Once they make the diagnosis, you are quickly thrust into one test after another, one doctor after another, one opinion after another and many decisions that must be made.
One month after my diagnosis, I went in for a bilateral mastectomy and while I was on the operating table, Mike collapsed in the waiting room and was admitted to the hospital. It was this day that we found out his cancer had metastasized to his brain, and we were now looking at the days that he had left. We lost Mike 18 days later. My surgery recovery and cancer fight began at the time of my mourning. The next day I had to have CT scan, 3 days after that, I had my port inserted to begin chemo. 2 days later, I held Mike’s memorial service. I walked into the cancer center the next week and began my first round of chemo. This was just one week of having cancer in my life…it was a whirlwind.
