Originally posted as "Cancer, Why You? Why Not You?" on ezinearticles.com

Hello Friends,

A three post blog week? Unheard of right? Well I have been trolling my name on google and couldn't believe all the old articles, posts and blogs I had floating out there in the web quagmire. This one was pretty detailed with my "story" Of course. there have been a lot of things that have happened since the original posting of the on . If you have been following in recent history, you've shared those new events with me. If you are just finding me for the first time, then this story will show you the beginning. Reading through my recent (three years now) blog posts here will catch you up on the middle. You'll just have to keep following to find out how it all ends. LOL!

soooo, here is the posted article I wrote on ezine:



Cancer! You hear that word and it sends terror rippling down your spine. Cancer has stalked me since I was 8 yrs old. I am now 45. Let me share a short story of the cancer in my life.

At 8, shortly after the death of my father, my mom found out she had bilateral breast cancer. When she explained what that meant to me and my sisters we were frightened we would lose her also. She chose to have a double mastectomy. No chemo or radiation. That was in 1975. She is still a survivor here in the year 2010. I knew that the odds of cancer being passed down to either my two sisters or myself were high. I did my montlhy exams. As well as yearly visits for my gynecological exam. Life went by uneventfully for many years.

In my teen years I met the boy who would one day be my husband. That is a whole other story getting us to the point where we being husband and bride. Once married, we did the usual matrimonial things. We set up house, held down jobs and had a couple of kids. Then one day it happened. My beloved began to sleep. I'm not talking taking Sunday naps in front of the tv. This sleep was, get up, go to work, eat dinner then sleep from dinner time till it was time to get up for work. This cycle continued for months. We both assumed this fatigue was due to a job transition and upcoming move from Colorado to Texas. Once we moved to Texas the cycle continued. At first we said, the constant tiredness is due to adjusting to a new state, and new job. Months went by and I set up a Doctor appointment for my fella. I called him at work and told him he had an appointment with the Doctor that afternoon and he better go cause I was going to be there waiting for him. Over the course of several weeks, the Dr. ran tests for Tuberculosis, Epstein barr virus, mono, and then finally the dreaded C word came up. The test was run, and we went home to wait. There is a lot of waiting in Cancer. One day I opened my mail and found a letter from my insurance company pre-approving my guy for chemotherapy. No one had told us he had cancer. Talk about freaking out. My guy and I went to the Doc and she said "does he look like a man who has cancer to you?" After I gave her a piece of my mind for saying "if I could look at a man or woman and say this one has cancer and this one is well, you would be out of a job, and how the heck do you explain an insurance company giving permission for treatments if the Dr didn't authorize them?" We never went back.

We got a second opinion and found out that my 30 something yr old hubby had a cancer called chronic lymphocitic leukemia. A disease primarily diagnosed in Senior citizens. We were shocked. I was shocked. I had always expected I would get breast cancer, and that he would stay well based on our family histories. He went through 4 months of chemo, and then took 3 yrs worth of alpha interferon shots every other day to help him stay in remission.

He was told at the end of 4 months of treatments that his cancer was in remission. I won't forget that date. It was March 1 1998. That was the night I felt a lump under my armpit. That lump kept me up all night. I had the appropriate tests and a crazy surgical situation where the doc took healthy tissue and left me a great big lump of cancer. A second surgery by a different surgeon removed the cancer and gave me a partial mastectomy. Hard to deal with but I was glad to be alive. I had 6 months of chemo and 33 radiation treatments.

Now you are not going to believe what happened next. Here goes. I began to take a hormone therapy to prevent breast cancer re-occurrence called tamoxifen. My cancer was estrogen positive, so this drug was meant to suppress estrogen. Here is what happened after I began the medicine. I began bleeding as though I had a heavy period even though my periods have never been regular. This happened for many months. Finally my ob/gyn ran some tests. As a side effect of the tamoxifen I had developed endometrial cancer. Say what?!? So out came my lady parts. I decided against Doctors advice to cease taking the tamoxifen because of the other side affects that may be possible. This was in the year 2000.

So, You might be saying, "that all sucks so bad." It wasn't easy to go through at all, but I don't see it as something sad. Here is what my husband said when first diagnosed. When everyone was ringing their hands and saying "Why you" He was smiling and saying "why not me Who better than a person of faith to get ill with something like this. If for no other reason than to show that it won't shake my faith" Wow, that made an impact on me and so many other people. His example made me so much stronger and more faithful when I went through it. Cancer blessed us. It taught us compassion for others. Helped my children to be more empathetic to others no matter what their situation. It brought us all so much closer as a family. Plus we got to learn so many great scientific things. LOL. That was hardly the biggest bonus from all that we went through. We learned that cancer isn't terrifying. It is something you live with. In the same way that a diabetic lives with their disease daily, my husband lives with his chronic cancer as well. The biggest bonus of it all is that it has helped us all to seize the day. Live in the moment. Argue less, laugh more. And we always know that today is better than yesterday but not as good as tomorrow. As a family who has come through cancer and are now on the other side, I can see that cancer or not, It is truly a beautiful life.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5459769


Thank you so much for stopping by,

Leslie