What Would You Do?

 (For this post, I started writing about my journey in detail and then realized I was telling the story of appointments, chemos, tests, and such. That’s boring. So, I gave myself one page to write and here it is.)

April 13, 2007.  Bad Friday.  Two things happened; 1) my boyfriend (at the time) bought us tickets to see Linda Ronstadt with the Arkansas Symphony; and 2) I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  A few months later, OH!  Linda!!!  It was an amazing performance.  For the first time I heard, ‘Feels Like Home’ and oh how that song spoke to me that night.  Simply put, I was reduced to tears.  To this day, I have never heard a more beautiful song.  Thank you, John.

But yeah, I had breast cancer.  A year later, I had beaten it.  Easy peasy!

Fast forward to February 2009. I had been ‘clean’ (from cancer) for right at a year and was having lunch with my friend and Pink Sister, Jeni Smith.  Jeni saved my life.  Jeni is from Hamburg and was in town so she and I went to lunch at Reno’s in North Little Rock.  I remember she was having a PET scan the next day because she'd 'found something' where the initial cancer originated and was having it checked.  We were talking about recurrence and at some point the conversation went like this:

Me:  What?

JS: Yeah, you have to still check yourself-to make sure it doesn’t come back.

Me:  So you’re telling me that even though I’ve had BOTH my breasts removed, I still need to check myself?

JS:  Yep.

And wouldn’t you know it.  I went home, did a check, and discovered a hard pea-sized area under my left armpit.  Sonofabitch.  In March 2009, my journey of living life as a woman, mother, sister, daughter and friend with Metastatic Breast Cancer began.

It’s been a rollercoaster ride to say the least. In summary:  I have cried, laughed, fallen to my knees in despair, stood strong on the rock of my salvation, cut ties with people who bring me down, rekindled friendships from elementary school and made new friends, I have thrown up waiting on test results, visited places I’d never been but wanted to see, I have experienced anger that I never want to experience again but likely will, in many ways I am a kinder person, I've been hospitalized and had blood transfusions, I have been called a ‘miracle’, and I’ve been frightened of my mortality.  But, because of all of this, I do know one thing:  Yes, I am going to die, but that day is not today.  So what should I do?

Today, I will go with my mom and BFF/sister to have lunch at Ronaldo’s in Hot Springs followed by baths, massages, facials, and foot rubs.  I will re-fill my spring-water jugs.  I will make a memory.  Tomorrow, I will accompany my son as he does his first television appearance as a cook.  (He won’t call himself a chef.)  I will make a memory.  I could go on, but I only have a page.

I can’t even begin to thank the people who have walked along this journey with me so I won’t try.  There are a countless number of people, friends and strangers alike, who have shown me kindness, often undeserved.  This sounds cliché but chances are if you are reading this you have had a positive impact on me at some point in the past 5 years.  From a text to tickets to a trip, none of it has gone unappreciated.

Here is your challenge: Ask yourself—If a doctor told you that you only had a 20% chance of being alive in 5 years, what would you want to do, what  memory would you make?  Go make that happen.

Really.  Now.  Go make a memory.