Diana's Story

I was a single mother for 15 years. My 2 sons were finally out on their own and at 43 I started my life with my new husband Lance on 8/20/2005. We built a new home together and closed on the house 1/13/2006. We worked all the next day painting the interior of the garage. Exhausted I went home and took a hot bath to relax. While bathing I discovered a lump in my right breast. I called my doctor and they scheduled a sonogram which came back inconslusive so they sent me for a mamogram. They had me wait while a doctor could review the mamogram. The doctor came in and said it looked worrysome and wanted to do a biopsy immediately.

Laying there during the biopsy I kept telling myself this couldn't be breast cancer as we do not have a family history. I did not go to work the next day as I knew if I got a phone call with bad news I would not want to be at the office so instead I called a girlfriend and we went to lunch. We had no more than ordered our food when my cell phone rang and the doctor tells me the bad news, I do have breast cancer. I can still remember that moment like it was yesterday. We got our food to go and went back to my house. My husband came home at lunch and I told him the news and we both sat down and cried.

I saw an oncologist who referred me to a surgeon who highly recommended a mastectomy due to the size of the lump. I just kept thinking this couldn't be happening, we were still newlyweds. My husband was very supportive and told me I had to make this decision and he would be there for me no matter what I chose to do. I saw a plastic surgeon about reconstruction and had to make some hard decisions. I chose to have the mastectomy on the right breast and they put an expanded in place at the same time. I was told the lymph nodes taken during surgery were not cancerous. I was healing pretty well when I got a phone call about 2 weeks after my surgery telling me that when they looked at the lymph modes again they did find cancer. I then had to go back for surgery for them to remove additional nodes which did come back normal.

I started my 8 chemo treatments on 5/28/06 and finished 8/28/06. I was so blessed to have had so much support from my husband, family and friends. I'm not sure I could have gotten through it without all of their love and support. I can honestly say that having cancer has changed my life in many ways but mostly that I thank God every morning for another day and for keeping me cancer free.