WOW - 30,000 reinforcements (visits to my posthope.org page) is why I share my journey!

Wow, I cannot believe I have had over 30,000 visits to my posthope.org page.  That is just amazing.  Thank you so much for reading and supporting me through my cancer journey.  It means the world to me.  Wow . . . that just blows my mind.  My heart feels so full, especially as I get prepared for my second surgery tomorrow - the big one.

Yup, tomorrow is the big day for my bilateral mastectomy.  As my children say, my boobie buttons will be gone. Fingers crossed all the cancer and poison will be gone.  The goal is to have the surgery complete and only spend one night in the hospital.  Abbey and Ayden are on their way to Wisconsin with Auntie Nina and Auntie Monica.  A big thank you to Nina and Monica for driving to Canada to spend much needed quality time with us prior to surgery and then taking our angels to Wisconsin for two weeks so I can heal after surgery.  We are scheduled to be at the hospital at 7:30am tomorrow.  We will drop Ginger off at Miss Kadey's house.  Thank you Kadey, Marcus, Lilly, and Emery for taking care of our fluffy four legged baby during this time.  I cannot forget to thank nurse Lauren for all the advice she has provided to me in preparation for surgery and afterwards.  To have a dear friend that has been through the same surgery continue to reach out to us and get us all set has been invaluable.  Nurse Charlotte, I thank you in advance my sweetest as you will be making the trip back to Canada to take care of me post surgery.  Last but never least, my love, my one and only, my heart and soul, Greg, my words are never enough to show you how thankful I am for you.  I ask of all of you, please reach out to him everyone once in a while to make sure he is okay.  As I continue to repeat, he never gets a break and is always taking care of everything.  Anyone that has spent time with us the past year, has seen Greg in action . . . just absolutely amazing and selfless.  Also, thank you to everyone who has reached out, sent positive vibes and gifts, and have said prayers for us while we go through surgery.  I am overwhelmed with emotion having such a strong support system.  Once again, I am one of the fortunate ones to have such a large circle of love.

What's next after surgery?  We wait for the pathology report.  This will let us know if there is a need for any additional treatment such as radiation, etc.  The docs believe all should be good based on my current treatment, and that I won't need anything else.  Fingers crossed.  I sure want to believe the docs; however, everytime the docs have told me something positive, they ended up being incorrect.  Thus I won't believe it until the pathology report comes in.  Of course of course I am thinking positive, but I want finality.  Also, I am scheduled to have a phone call with docs on July 25th for the gene panel results.  So for me, my nerves will not be settled until I get the pathology report and gene panel results.  If my pathology report is clean and the gene panel results are negative (fingers crossed), then I will heal and wait for reconstruction.  This should be about three months from tomorrow.  The goal is by year end to be all clear from this evil cancer.

I continue to get questions of why have I been so public with my cancer journey or people are amazed at my openness.  I received similar feedback and questions with our adoption. Things so private are definitely a personal choice for each and everyone of us on how we want to manage, as they should be.  I wasn't always like this, and actually, until my early 30's, I was completely closed off to even my closest family and friends as I struggled personally with significant events in my life.  I felt people would judge me; think less of me; I was so embarrassed; people would question my decisions; I would get advice I didn't want (but probably should have) heard; why would I want to burden people, as they have their own personal struggles to deal with; and these were my choices sometimes, so it was my responsibility to manage my choices on my own.  

For me, there are a few reasons I choose to share some of my significant life altering moments.  Several months after my first divorce was finalized (yes, yes, Greg is my second marriage - the first one was for practice), and surviving through the some of the hardest struggles of my life, I actually had moments of feeling like a survivor.  I was proud of myself.  I have been self sufficient and strong since I was a child, but I felt more independent at this moment.  I also realized that many people go through marriage and then divorce for many many reasons (again these must be personal choices with no judgment).  My marriage was a very difficult one that dealt with very significant personal hardships that most people do not go through in life.  And when some people choose to stay in these hardships for longer than most human beings would understand, you tend to close yourself off from this judgment.  Which is what I did.  Prior to my marriage I was a judger, or as Greg would say an adjudicator, of people like this.  I had no basis for it and no right.  However, not going through it personally, I quite didn't understand the mental capacity of individuals in these situations.  Well guess what?  After living through it, very quickly did I realize it was my life and nobody elses. Also, only I could decide when enough was enough, and more importantly, when the time was in which I had the mental strength to leave.  

After my divorce, I also had many moments of reflection on surviving my very difficult childhood.  This was a time that I had the opportunity to look back at my childhood and realize many of the difficult times I went through in my life were not my fault and more importantly not my choice.  I was just a child (a baby even through my early teens), and I didn't choose the life I was given.  Instead of being embarrassed of the first 30 years, I finally became so proud of the first 30!  There were many incidents that mentally I blocked out of my memory like so many of us do.  It's a survival mechanism, right?  Well, during this time in my life, these flashbacks kept popping up.  Some of them I had to stop and actually think . . . did this really happen to me or was it just a nightmare I had.  Unfortunately, as I sat and pondered on these horrific events, I realized they were real.  Don't get me wrong, this was no picnic thinking about these, but for me I had to do it.  Many times I cried and even went through severe depression.  However, it was important for me in order to form the person I am today.  And as I type, please don't feel any part of me thinks other people should be required to do the same.  This too is something I learned . . . we all survive and cope our own personal ways - no judging.  So once I was able to get through the past events of my childhood, I knew I was strong and independent, and I was just a little human trying to survive what life handed me.  I also didn't overthink any of my own personal decisions up to this point in my life.  I knew they were all my choices, and some were needed to get me where I am today.  Good and bad.  To this day, I remind myself, you need to fail sometimes and make bad decisions in order to learn, grow, be happy and successful.

My childhood, along with my marriage and divorce (marriage and divorce - you cannot have a divorce without marriage ;) and as both were very difficult for me like so many others) just enforced to me that I needed to be my strongest cheerleader.  Having this time in my early 30's, living my life, I learned so much about choices, adjudication of others, strengths, and the power of sharing life altering events.

Sharing . . . back to why I share such personal struggles.  Of course there are reasons noted in my words above, but also because we are all human, which means every single one of us goes through difficult journeys throughout life.  Yes, mine may be totally different than yours, but that does not mean it's any less of a struggle or that I cannot relate.  I cannot tell you how many times I have told our adoption story to an acquaintance or a complete stranger and received either a " thank you for sharing"; "I adopted or I am adopted", or even better, "I am going through adoption or my friend is going through adoption and do you mind if we exchange contact information?" .  How freaking great is that!

Also, when you look on the outside of my family as a friend on social media, an acquaintance, an employee, or coworker, my family looks pretty good . . . married to an amazing, smart, loving, hot man with two beautiful children and a great career - looks pretty good, right?  But that surely doesn't mean we haven't had our struggles.  We are all flawed and all human.  There are also many times I catch myself comparing my life to other families and wishing I had that life.  Then I give myself a good mental shake, like we do with our 5 year olds when they get crabby (we make them physically shake off the crabbies).  I then stop myself, which is hard sometimes because hey, I am human and we are built with that envy gene (I have no freaking clue if gene is right right word as you don't need to know that to be in the insurance industry), and I remind myself that just because I don't see the personal struggles, I cannot assume there are none.  Especially through this cancer journey, I really love my life and would not want to trade with anyone :).

Most importantly, right now when I watch the American news from Canada, we need to remember more importantly than ever, we are human and are all innately good people that want to make others happy.  It's in our DNA.  The feeling of love, kindness, generosity, and acceptance makes our hearts beat.  So when I share my stories and I can make these feelings occur, I am doing my little part to make the world a better place.

How does this keep happening?  This was supposed to be a short post just giving everyone the heads up about surgery tomorrow, and then I go on and on . . .   Okay I am done for now.  I need to get ready for tomorrow.  Greg will provide an update post surgery for everyone.  Thanks for reading and hugs to all of you. XOXO