This is the most terrible thing that has ever happened to me.

For the past month I have felt the biggest combinations of terror, hope, anger, sadness, disappointment, love, care, and rage.

I have a bone scan tomorrow.  I have a bone scan tomorrow.  I have a freaking bone scan tomorrow.

And then I have a body scan on Thursday.

And I am afraid of what they are going to find.

There is a chance they may find nothing.  Ha!  That would be a laugh.

I feel already like I’m doomed.

People told me that once we had a plan, that I would feel better but now there are new plans, new doubts, new questions because there were just so many lymph nodes involved that it  may be that I am at stage 4 and if I am there, everything is only treatable. Nothing is curable if I’m stage 4.

And it is only treatable for so long.  And then it’s over.

It may take years but this thing, if it’s stage 4, then it essentially over.  Put a fork in me.

If I’m stage 4, I don’t get chemo because what’s the point?

I get hormone therapy and hope it works for as long as it works.

But if I’m stage 3 I get chemo and the works because there is a glimmer of a chance that we can beat this and it won’t come back.

And I won’t know anything until I have my bones scanned and my body scanned and I am terrified to the point where I can barely breathe.

I don’t have choice about any of this.  All I can do is what they tell me to do.

Tomorrow, bright and early, I will get up, pull myself out of bed, get dressed, brush my teeth  and get ready to have my bones scanned for cancer.

And I don’t want to.  I really don’t.

I just want to get the chemo and have hope for a full recovery.

The not knowing is torturous.  The not knowing rips through my head.  I don’t know.  Bones?  Liver? Lungs? Brain? Clear?  Unmeasurable?

I want to get off this ride.

I want to believe that I really will be ok again one day. But really will I ever be ok again?

Sometimes, I play games in my head and tell myself that I deserve this.  That this is punishment.  I don’t say why me?  I just take it because it is what it is.   I hate this cancer.  I hate what it has done to me in just a few short weeks.

But I will pull myself out of that bed tomorrow shaking and crying most likely and I will get in the car and go to the place and get the injections and do the wait and I will get in the machine because what else can I do?

My only option left is to search for the truth, even if I don’t like what I find.

The surgery went well but the outcome wasn’t what we wanted. They found cancer in her nodes and now it looks like she’ll need radiation too. So we are angry and sad and worried. But like Beth said after processing all of it for a few hours –she’s to cute to die.

If anger could cure it the cancer would have spontaneously combusted last night. But now we are being positive and we are rallying for the long haul and all of your love and support means so much.

A quick update from Beth’s husband—Beth is out of surgery and resting. She’s alert and doing well. Her pain level seems ok. Jello and apple juice so far.

Here I am.  The night before surgery.  It is quite surreal.

Clear lymph nodes.  Clear lymph nodes.  Clear lymph nodes.

We saw the plastic surgeon this morning.  He wrote all over my chest with a marker.   Guidelines for surgery.  Mortifying.

But it made me wonder about the scrubby soap that the hospital sent me in the mail.  I’m supposed to scrub myself in the morning and keep the soap out of my eyes and ears to avoid damage.  DAMAGE?  What the heck kind of soap is this?

The plastic surgeon told me just to dab with the scrubby soap.  This, in my opinion, defeats the scrubby purpose of scrubby soap but I guess the guidelines he wrote on me trump a good scrub.

I have been feisty today.  I am acting the same way I behave the day before I run a marathon.  Kind of moody. Kind of crabby.  Kind of snarky.  Not much fun but I’m still kind of funny.

Tomorrow begins in the nuclear medicine department.  Shots of radioactivity in my boobs.  I can’t wait.

Then we head to the hospital.  Check in and then surgery.

I’m scared but I’m ready to start the  cancer marathon.  I am prepared.  I have supplies.  I’m good.  I hope.

I hope they give me some really good drugs.  I deserve some really good drugs.

When I was first diagnosed, I knew I wanted to be open about my cancer experience however I didn’t expect the outpouring of love and kindness from everyone.  It has been such a blessing.

My dad battled cancer for twenty years before he passed away in 2011.  He was very private about his battle.  He didn’t want people to know he was sick.  Even toward the end.  I tried my best to respect that and I know that the approach was what my dad needed.  He was a very strong man.

I also knew that keeping my cancer a secret would have probably made me feel even sicker.  I just let everything out there all the time and I can’t see why this cancer thing  should be any different.

And also, I am terrified. I am not the biggest social butterfly.  Honestly, people exhaust me.  But I’ve realized that while I spend some of my best nights at home in my p.j’s with a good book, I do need people.  I need support.  I can not tell you how much the support of my friends and family has meant to me.  Truly, it means the world.  I believe in love.  I believe in giving people positive thoughts and good vibes even when it’s the only thing I can give to them.  And here, at the beginning of my journey, I need every bit of positivity.  I need you.

And you need each other.  It shouldn’t take a cancer diagnosis to reach out to someone in need.  We all have stuff we go through and it’s important we try to be there for each other.  Kumbahya and all that.  But it’s true!  It’s so true.  We need each other.

Reaching out can be so simple.  Some people have sent me cards in the mail.  It lights up my day.  Cards are such a wonderful way to let people know how we feel about them.  When was the last time you sent a card to someone you love?  I admit, this is something I myself am not good at but from now on, I am going to make a bigger effort to send as many cards as I can (once I can move my arms again).  Maybe tomorrow you could send a card to someone you haven’t talked to in awhile or someone you miss or someone who is hurting.  It doesn’t have to be me.  Just someone.  Someone you care about.  Someone you need.

Tomorrow really is the first big step.  The needle biopsy, the MRI, the consultations, they were all just the prologue to this journey.  It all begins tomorrow.

I wonder how this will change me.  I hope I can be strong.  I hope this isn’t my last hopeful post.

Tonight I’m signing off with a very cheesy song that has inspired me in the past when I ran marathons to fight cancer.  Now the fight is for my children, my husband, my family, my friends.  This time the fight is for my life.

Wish me luck.

This post is an ode to my husband who has thus far stepped up to the challenge of his wife (me) having breast cancer at a fairly young age.

This man has been my rock.  Since my diagnosis, he has sat with me, listened to me, comforted me.  He lets me win most arguments.  He stays with the boys while I go off with friends who are trying to support me with coffee, and wine and lunch.

All he asks in return is that he gets to get a bit of tennis in.

That’s all he asks.

He has been gentle, patient and understanding.  He has also been my cheerleader when I feel down (which, if we are being honest, is necessary but annoying).

Neither of us likes domestic stuff.  Cooking and cleaning and laundry are at the bottom of our list.  But he is mostly making an effort.

When we first began to date many, many years ago, I had that thought flit through my head in the beginning “He’s just too nice.”

Like a dating death sentence, am I right?

But then I really began to look at my life and realized that I could do a lot worse than nice.  In fact, I deserved nice.

And he wasn’t just nice.  He was (is) thoughtful and kind and gentle.  He is strong and brave and extremely loyal.  And ladies, he is also dreamy, hot, handsome.

He’s a good dad to our boys.

He’s a wonderful husband to me: smart as a whip, sharp as a tack, the man is the whole package.

Not every man will get up with the baby in the middle of the night.  Not every man understands that when he is alone with his kids, it’s not babysitting.  And no one needed to explain that to him which is an even bigger bonus.

He is my partner in everything, especially co-parenting and I respect his style because he is very creative.

When our eldest was born, my cousin gave him this little plush cow and when you squeezed it’s tummy, he said “Moo!”  Well, whenever my husband would change the baby’s diaper, I would hear the “Moo!”.  Even at 2 in the morning.

I asked him why  he did this and he said that this was his way of letting the boy know that a diaper change was coming.  Umm…ok. Kind of Pavlovian but ok.  I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t live on a farm.

We still have that cow somewhere and every time I see it, I think of late night diaper changes.

My husband also invented “punishment hugs”.  When one of our children is completely losing it (and this happens quite a bit) or has done something inappropriate or foolish, my husband will say, “I think that deserves a punishment hug.” and then he walks over to the child and gently hugs him.

And people….most of the time…it works.

I work in early childhood education and I never in a million years would have thought of that one.

And now we have found ourselves in a difficult place.  And even though it is essentially happening to me, he has made it abundantly clear that we are in this together.

And yes, we still have arguments (it’s always about cleaning! Ugh!) and no neither one of us is perfect but during this time I realize that my investment in marrying a really nice guy, is paying off.

I am so grateful to have him as my partner.  I honestly don’t know what I would do without him.  I really picked a good man and I am so glad that I realized all those years ago that I deserved to have NICE in my life.

And I still do.

Or at least, I’m not very fun.  We went on a mini trip with the boys.  They were absolutely joyful.  Running around jumping and climbing on things, enjoying themselves.  I have to force myself to engage right now, and when I do, I find it exhausting.  I am trying.

We went to dinner.  It was nice.  The host walked by and noted we were all eating comfort food.  Husband had pot roast, eldest had fried chicken and mashed potatoes, I had salmon with more mashed potatoes and youngest had pasta with butter.  Can’t get more comforting than that.  Our family needs comfort.  There is no denying that.

There was a big party going on in the restaurant and this man stood up and gave a beautiful toast to his daughter on her fortieth birthday.

Her fortieth birthday.

And I sat there and cried a little into my mashed potatoes.

When I met the plastic surgeon last week, he smiled and said ,”Helluva Fortieth Birthday present, eh?”

Whatever, I spent my birthday in Paris and it was glorious. Breast cancer is NOT my birthday present.

But speeches like that about fortieth birthdays make me a little weepy I guess.

I am really trying hard not to feel sorry for myself.

Today was better.  I’m feeling ok.

When we got home, we turned on a DVR’d episode of “The Voice” and some country western girl starts talking about how she lost her mother to breast cancer…

“FAST FORWARD!!!  FAST FORWARD!!!”

And we did with a sigh of relief.

We don’t need to hear about that stuff.

I am not going to let this kill me.

And with that, I am going to link to an article sent to me by my dear friend and former roommate.  It speaks volumes about how to treat a patient and their family.  Please take a look if you have a chance.  HERE

As always, thank you for your support throughout this difficult time.

I found out yesterday that I do not have a BRCA mutation.  So that’s good.  Very good.

As my friend J texted, “Yay! You get to keep your ovaries!”

It’s looking good.

My surgery is scheduled for THIS Thursday 4/18.

I am excited to get this stupid, ugly, no good cancer out of me but I am scared as heck of surgery.  I’ve never really been under full general anesthesia.

And I don’t even want to think about the procedure itself.  Makes me throw up in my mouth a little.  Yick.  Good thing I get to be the patient and not think about the ins and outs of what is going to happen right, because it sounds horrific.

But I want this tumor out of me so bad.  I hate it.  It throbs at night from the biopsy and it scares me because I start to worry that its growing or something.

I don’t like you tumor.  You suck.

My birth mother sent me this mantra to my cancer and I am trying to repeat it as many times as possible:

“Found you out CANCER!  Got you on the radar!  You’re going nowhere but DOWN!  You are now under arrest!  in JAIL!  on HOLD! and going nowhere but into an incinerator!  So it is!  Thank you God!”

I am asking my husband to update on my Facebook and this blog once surgery is done.

I can’t tell you how much your support means to me.  The care and consideration is so uplifting.  Thank you for keeping me in your thoughts during this horrible experience.

Last night, I was sitting in my bed reading a magazine and realized I have never ever in my life spent so much time thinking about my breasts.  I realized that no matter what, my life is never going to be the same again.

I really, really like my life so yeah, I’m sad about this.

But I’m just one out of eight women you meet every day.  I’m just the average gal who got hit with the cancer stick at age 40.  Freakin’ 40.  So far 40 has not been one bit fabulous.

One of my hopes is taken care of: BRCA negative, baby!  I’m still focusing on clear lymph nodes and a low onca score.  Let it be!!!

As always, thank you for following me on this journey.