LJ Idol "Unprepared"

[8673]

It was one of those things no one can ever be prepared for.  We have a long family history of it, but still, there was no way we could be prepared.  There's no way anyone can be

Comments

[brightflashes]

Beautiful entry; well written and engaging. And I relate so much to this. This is just a fantastic piece. I'm so glad that you are okay.

[8673]

Thank you. It shook me up a lot to write this one. It's still terrifying to think about. But we keep fighting.

[tsarina]

I thought about writing on this very topic, but I think you did this far more justice than I could. It's quite empathetic.

My mother had cancer and a hysterectomy. There's cancer all over the family. It scares me a lot.

[8673]

In my family, the youngest age of radical hysterectomy (the younger generation all has radicals now as our cancer is caused by estrogen), was twenty three. The youngest age for a double mastectomy was thirty one. Almost all of the females that I'm blood related to on my mother's side... All of us. It's always uterine, breast, or cervical.

It's terrifing stuff. I'm a survivor and I'm still scared.

[roina_arwen]

That's very sad, but I applaud your strength (and your mom's) and your willingness to fight. *Hugs*

[8673]

Thank you. Mom and I are natural born fighters, but getting that phone call is a whole different world. I was thinking about it last night and the best metaphor I could come up with is cancer is like trying to run a marathon with your pants down around your ankles. And you don't know your pants are down until it's all done. You just keep trying to not fall and continually wonder why your balance is screwed up.

And my story is nothing in comparison to my mom's. She still amazes me. There's days when it's close to my thoughts and I look at her and get teared up just thinking, "You're still here. It didn't stop you. Wow."

[kiwiria]

Very powerful entry. Thank you for sharing.

[8673]

Thank you. This one was hard for me to write.

[spydielives]

That Disney Land trip must have felt amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

psst: Is there a word missing here?

"...already knew. Breast."

[8673]

Technically, there is a word missing. But... for our family, cancer is so common (specifically reproductive system cancer), that we tend to avoid the "c" word. We just give the area affected. So conversations go like this..."Your cousin J called. She's got it too. Uterine." or "My aunt had breast." For us, the "c" word is just as taboo as cursing is in other families. It's infinitely more scary

[spydielives]

Wow. That is so cool.

Your comment makes a neat addendum to your entry. Thank you for the additional context.