Hi,

My story starts 9 years ago. I was 33 years old and a single mother. My daughter Sedona was only 3 years old. Her dad and I had separated when I was pregnant and the divorce was final shortly after Sedona was born. I was going to school to get my Special Ed. Teaching credential, and had just taken a full time position as a Special Day class teacher at an elementary school in Pacific Palisades, California. I felt healthy, was at an ideal weight and had hair down to my waist. I was not a smoker and rarely drank. I ate a healthy diet…except for an occasional bowl of Lucky Charms when my sisters and I got together. I worked out regularly at the gym. I enjoyed sports: water and snow skiing, horseback riding, jogging, biking, rollerblading, and hiking. I had found a small lump in my right breast months earlier. I waited for a month, then went to the doctor. He sent me for a mammogram in July. The mammogram results were negative for cancer. In September I went back to the doctors. I told him that the lump seemed to be getting bigger. He sent me for an ultra-sound. Again the results were negative, but he sent me to a surgeon for a consultation just to be on the safe side. I went to the surgeon’s office determined to finish up with these appointments as I was so busy with school and my new teaching job. I just didn’t have time for these doctor appointments. What an annoyance they were becoming. I also didn’t like having to spend $5 and $6 on parking and $10 on the co-payments my insurance required me to pay. Little did I know that this was only the beginning of a long, long journey I was about to begin. At the surgeon’s office I requested the biopsy that day. For some reason, I felt that I just could not live with this lump in my breast. The woman at the front desk said that she didn’t know if the surgeon would be able to perform a biopsy, as my appointment was just a consultation. I insisted, and then was apprehensive to find out that the surgeon had a cancelled appointment and would be able to fit in a biopsy that afternoon. Panic hit!!! “Do I really want to do this?’ I was all alone for my appointment. No one in my family knew anything about this. I hadn’t mentioned the lump to anyone. Breast Cancer did not run in my family, so what was the point? It was nothing right? Negative for cancer…that is what the mammogram and ultrasound reports had said. After making a call to my girlfriend’s husband (he is a breast surgeon), I decided to go ahead with the biopsy. It was not painful, and I remember the surgeon showing the small lump to me, saying that it did not look malignant. I drove myself home with some gauze over the biopsy area, still telling no one in my family what was going on.
The following week…it was a Tuesday actually, I got a call in my classroom. It was the receptionist at the surgeon’s office. She told me that I could not come into the doctor’s office for my follow-up appointment that afternoon by myself. I thought this was absurd, as I had gone in for the biopsy surgery alone and had been allowed to drive myself home. The woman on the other end of the phone said, “I have strict orders from the doctor. You are not allowed to come in alone!” I have seen enough movies to know what this means. I didn’t need anyone
to tell me now. I already knew what the doctor was going to say that
afternoon…I had the unthinkable…the “C” word! I had cancer!!

That's all I have written for now.
Thanks,
Courtney