06/06/2023
Just an amazing local organization
. A patient of David's Dream & Believe Cancer Foundation shared their journey with us and maybe her story will provide to somebody currently battling a diagnosis.
"Pink Sneakers
Throughout my life I had realized the importance of being on top of my health and getting screenings on time. I was due for my annual mammogram…one year and one day later and wanted to “squeeze” it in the last day of my insurance plan year in July 2022. Never would I have imagined that call a couple days later that something didn’t look right.
I coughed it up as if it was nothing and figured I could wait until after a hard-earned work vacation. Reality hit when I went for further testing and then a biopsy, still believing it was nothing. Trying hard to not put energy towards something so negative. Then came the shock of the doctor telling me on September 27, 2022, that I had “blah blah blah…cancer”.
Then radio silence…I was still in my doctor’s office, next to my mother, my doctor’s mouth was still moving but I heard the word cancer then my hearing froze. I felt like only my body was still there…my mind and senses went somewhere else. I was scared…the doctor was drawing and explaining my particular cancer. This is the first time I realized all the different types of breast cancer, as if I was observing from the outside, looking in.
I was in disbelief. Cancer at the age of 43? I had done my monthly breast exams and felt nothing, no symptoms whatsoever, even knowing what to “look for/feel” since I was in a sorority that raised funds for breast cancer. I felt well-informed and prepared for the looking and feeling but not the shock of hearing “you have breast cancer”.
I decided to do genetic testing since my maternal grandmother had died of breast cancer at the young age of 33 (a woman I always wished I would’ve had the chance to meet). I always knew I had an increased risk but no one in my immediate family has had breast cancer, including my mother and 5 siblings. To my surprise, I do not have the gene that causes breast cancer…like even more confused…where did this thing come about? How does it skip like that?
My breast cancer journey has been one of the biggest tests in my life (and I have had many). A cancer diagnosis has been a shock to my entire body…a super roller coaster of emotions, a financial burden and so many appointments, all on top of holding down a full-time job. At a work meeting in November 2022, my HR colleague said to me, “you are SO positive, considering everything that’s going on”. Without wasting a moment, I replied, “I have to be [positive] and I’ve worked so hard to be THIS positive…I can’t imagine the alternative if I am not this positive”. I don’t know if I startled her that day or felt like I was hiding something…but I have good days and bad days and I think my positivity is what’s killing my cancer, on top of the medical interventions! I believe I was built for this and will fight even more to live the life I want.
Pink Sneakers. Ironically enough, on my way home from the cancer diagnosis news, my mother took me to Costco, where I still felt somewhere else rather than in my body, and I bought a pair of pink sneakers…the door greeter put a huge smiley face on the back of my receipt and ever since that day it is hanging on my fridge. And, I’ve worn those pink sneakers nearly every day since then. Not as a reminder of the horrible news but as a reminder that was the day my life changed."
