We received some bad news on Friday, January 18th. I have breast cancer. As of right now we don't know much more.
I guess I need to back up a little. When I had a physical in December my doctor found a mass at the top of my left breast. He didn't seem very worried. He just mentioned that when I had a chance to go in for a mammogram, which I did. The mammogram didn't really show anything. It looked like one I had done two years ago. Because we knew that there was something there the Radiologist requested an ultrasound which showed the mass. The Radiologist asked me to come back for a biopsy.
The biopsy as done on the 16th. They gave me a shot then took 5 samples from the mass. We didn't expect the results until the 22nd. I didn't want to wait any longer than I had to so I called my doctor on Friday, just in case he already had the results. He was busy delivering a baby but he called me back around 5:30 with the bad news. He didn't give me many more details other than the biopsy came back positive. He said that he would have his office call to try and get me an appointment with a specialist on Monday. The specialist would be able to tell me more about the cancer and about how we can treat it. Unfortunately Monday is a holiday so he wasn't sure if the other doctor's office would be open. Hopefully it is. The sooner that we get more information the sooner we can start figuring out what we need to do. At this point all we know is that it is cancer. We don't know anything else so the unknown is very frightening.
We told the kids the bad news on Friday night. They seemed to handle it pretty well. Shawn and Mariah were pretty quiet. Tyler was upset because out of the 3 kids he knows the most about cancer because he has either listened to or read books about people who have had cancer. We have also had two friends die from different types of cancer in the last 2 years. He was the most upset about their deaths also. Both Tyler and Mariah seemed more upset on Saturday. They wanted to be close to me and were easily upset over other things.
We spent Saturday letting our family know. We went to Bountiful to tell my parents first. Next we told Dave's mother and sister Helen. We went out to dinner with Trina & Chad Saturday night. We told them on the way there. We had to tell everyone else in our family by phone. On Sunday we told some of our friends and neighbors by phone and at church. I unfortunately don't have the time or energy to tell everyone I know or care about what is going on or keep them updated on a regular basis. Telling the story over and over again is very emotionally draining which is why I decided to start this blog. We had some friends who had a blog when their baby was in the hospital. It was a great way to keep up on her progress without bombarding them with questions from everyone. That is why I decided to follow their example. Dave or I will update this as we can and as new information becomes available.
I am so grateful for all the well wishes and offers of prayers and help. Emails and calls are appreciated but are also time consuming and hard right now. Please check the blog first. Hopefully it will answer most of your questions. Dave or I will try to return emails and calls as we can but this is going to become harder as I start into treatment. Dave is swamped with work, work, church, family etc. Now he will have even more to do. I am not sure what I will be up to. Please don't be offended if we can't get back to you. We will let Sister Hein and Bishop Beckett know what we need as we go along. Knowing that we have so much support available will take a lot of weight off our shoulders.
I will write again once we know more.
