Hope, Healing, and the Road Ahead

The weekend before starting chemo I had the opportunity to attend a retreat put on by the Cancer Support Community of Montana in Big Sky, MT. Around 50 cancer survivors from across Montana attended. I met several other women with br east cancer but also women living with kidney, ovarian, leukemia and other cancers.   The weekend was a perfect opportunity for connection, learning, healing and sharing in a beautiful setting . There were education sessions on exercise and nutrition ; a keynote speaker who led us through a grounding exercise ; yoga; an amazing sound bath; and a hike beginning atop Lone Mountain (elevation 8,8 00) and descending the mountain to the base camp.   All the women were incredibly friendly and open about sharing their cancer experience. Nea rly every in troduction began with someone asking you your name, where you lived, your diagnosis, and where you were with your treatment.   I came into the weekend still experiencing a lot of doubt and conf...

It's taken me several weeks to be able to write this post. I needed to wrestle with and eventually make peace with my oncologist's recommended treatment plan before I could post about it publicly. One thing that was communicated to me early on in this process by my medical team is that a treatment plan is not formally decided upon until after the final pathology results are received, which is typically a few weeks post-surgery. The plan takes into consideration age, overall health, menopausal status, stage of the cancer, grade of the cancer, the tumor’s genetic profile , and its hormone receptor status.     My situation is complicated by the fact that I have bilateral breast cancer, so I’m processing each test result twice. Some of the k ey factor s in developing my treatment plan include d :    The tumor in the left breast was stage 1A and the one in the right breast was 2A; both are considered early-stage cancer and have a very good prognosis, meaning tr...