I can’t believe that I’ve been a part of this world for a year now. Here’s a bit of reflection.

On April 27, 2023, my life changed. It changed completely. I can’t say I even have recovered from the three words I heard strung together in a way I will never forget.

“You have cancer.”

In my old life, BC (before cancer), I could easily think of the worst thing to happen to me. The thing I would never ever want to hear. Now this comes from someone that was told that they had a week left to live when they were thirty. This person being me. Back then I had complained I couldn’t breathe and I was having coughing attacks and it got so bad sometimes I couldn’t even move. This was more then hard at the time because I had a toddler running around. I thank my daughter for all the help she gave me back then. They put me in the hospital for the second time when it was finally apparent that there was something going on. I was having an allergic reaction to the doves we had as pets at the time. I was put on a strong dose of steroids and stayed in the hospital for the rest of the week on oxygen.

So BC, I would still have said, having cancer easily was the worst thing. I had seen my grandmother slowly deteriorate at age 17 from cancer and I never wanted to see that again. But alas, here I am.

They don’t tell you after they tell you that you have cancer how starting at that moment you have a new full time job. It’s like you were hired immediately and you didn’t even have to worry about the interview. (You just had the harrowing three weeks of waiting for the biopsy results to come in) Your life, it won’t be your own again for awhile, I mean you don’t even have time to think. And that girl that walked into that office a mere twenty minutes ago, she’s gone. You’ll never be her ever again.

There’s doctors appointments on doctors appointment as you start to meet the team that will be taking care of you. I didn’t question it, I just showed up for the appointments. There was never a question of, can I do this I was going to, no matter what. It was my geneticist that I found the most solace with. He told me that triple negative breast cancer was very rare and very aggressive and that Mr. Lumpy Man was about three years old, just a toddler. He hadn’t learnt yet that he could take control and take me down. But if I had waited a couple of years he would have learnt and I would have been down for the count. He said that they know more about triple negative now than they did three years ago so it’s actually good I didn’t find the lump until now. My chances were better, he said. If I could make it past five years alive, my chances would be just as good as anyone else with cancer. Triple negative has a high rate of reoccurring. I walked out of his office finally able to breathe. He didn’t tip toe around it like the others.

I started chemotherapy a mere two weeks later, not enough time to get my ducks in a row but long enough to know I’m getting the show on the road immediately.

Here I am a year later, 16 rounds of chemotherapy is done. My surgery is done. Now I’m just waiting for immunotherapy to start up again and waiting for radiation to start. I look back and think that this road has not been easy, and I fought to get here. I’ll be fighting the rest of my life until they find a cure. I’m not any closer to coming to terms with all of this. Some days I’m bubbly and positive and some days I have a pity party. I’m still exhausted and want to sleep all the time and I’m still having problems walking. I still have side effects from the chemotherapy popping up and I curse up a storm some days. But then I grab my Andi girl, and give her a hug. Take a deep breath and carry on.

I’m resilient. That’s what I’ve learnt. I can roll with the punches. But I need to be nicer to myself and realise my body got me here. I may not be what and who I was before. But we will figure that all out later.

I’m here now. I’m still here. (Still I stand). I'm unstoppable.

Edit: a sentence was messed up.