I Hear it’s Sunnier When You Take Control of Your Life
- Angela Inspires
- Sep 11, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 26, 2024
The Start of My Journey….
When the word CANCER came into my life for the first real-time I was going into my senior year of college. My mother found out the week before I was to head back to OU that the lump she'd found was breast cancer. I tried to stay home for the quarter, but like the wonderful parents they were I was pushed back to school. I wasn't to stop living my life due to this. I of course stayed that next weekend for my Mother's lumpectomy and made trips back for treatments.
We then spent the next 5 years treating her Triple Negative Breast Cancer diagnosis. Chemo, radiations, shots - it was constant. We thought we'd beaten it once, only for it to rear its head and come back full force. It metastasized and spread throughout her body, eventually making it to her brain. I lost her in 2014.
Living Life with Grief
I mean that exactly how it sounds. I swam in it, wallowed in it, laid in it. My life started changing in ways I didn't know how to deal with. Then my husband and I started making big changes, including moving away from home. It felt like we were leaving her behind, like I was turning into someone she didn't know. I wallowed more. This grief felt impossible. Life felt impossible. Growth felt impossible.
Taking back Control…
I finally got the courage up to get tested for the BRCA genetic mutation. It had been in conversations with my Mother that I found out about the gene. I just didn't push it, I didn't want her to bear the burden.
I struggled for a few years to get a doctor to refer my testing. I was confronted with what would be the beginning of this stupid struggle to have a doctor draw blood from my arm and let me know if my risk of cancer was insanely high. I had to really start fighting for my health care and I refused to take NO as an answer.
When I did finally get tested, it came back BRCA1+ and I was ready to get started. I'd spent years trying to get tested, I'd done so much research and had my mind made up that if it were to come back positive I'd almost immediately start surgeries.
I started this blog back up, went to consultations, shared my story with my family and friends. I had support and I also dealt with adverse opinions. BUT - I did not have people who knew what I was going through. I was 28 years old and making the decision to amputate my healthy breasts.
I found The Center for Restorative Breast Surgery and was relieved to have doctors that truly got it. They understood the importance of the decisions I was making and even focused on BRCA, as well as breast cancer.
Moving Forward…
I kept on sharing as I prepared for surgeries. Finding some support groups, but not fully diving in. I thought multiple were filled with too much information and they scared me more than supported me. I found another that felt more my speed, but I still didn't keep it visible right before surgery.
I wrote and made lists based on my own research. I acted as though my blog was giving people valuable information, but at the time I was sure it was just my friends and family keeping up with me. Either way it was cathartic and it was helping me move forward.
I had my Prophylactic Bilateral Mastectomy and DIEP Flap reconstruction in October 2017 and it was only a few weeks before, that I'd connected with individuals going into their surgeries. The week after surgery I laid in bed and started finding my people. I also started sharing more and more. I became vulnerable. I became open.
It was when I received a message from a woman thanking me for sharing and asking a few questions that I realized things had changed. I felt empowered in my own choices, but now I was sharing and helping others... it clicked.
I'd started to pull myself from that hole that was losing my Mom to cancer. I started living my life again. I wasn't changing the tv channel whenever a commercial about cancer came one, I literally had my surgery in the month of pink that I'd despised, and I wasn't shying away from conversation.
My Life Now…
I've flipped the script. I've changed my Cancer Story. I've found it is POSSIBLE to move forward, without losing the past.
I've connected with so many wonderful women and men who are living with this genetic mutation, who are living with cancer, who are caring for family members that are diagnosed. I'm sharing my Mother's story, sometimes with more tears than others. But I'm doing it. I'm talking about cancer and educating. I now have women reaching out daily with questions and kind words.
I'm still grieving, I always will be. But it's not crippling anymore. It couldn't run my life. This genetic mutation wasn't something I could hide from. I had to face it, and with that I started to face what cancer meant to me. I had to face the world again.
Now I'm midway through my surgical journey. I'm almost done with the breast portion, hoping this phase 2 is it for reconstruction. I've taken control and taken my 72-87% chance of breast cancer down to 2%.
I'm allowing the whole world to see my vulnerability and my BOOBs! Check out my blog at https://www.ihearitssunnier.com/ Id love to connect with you!
Comments