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This journal is about my experience dealing with and fighting breast cancer. I was diagnosed with infiltrating ductal carcinoma in my right breast on March 3, 2008. This type of breast cancer is the most common type, which means there is a lot of research and a lot of treatment options out there.

My surgery was on May 14. I was scheduled for a lumpectomy and sentinel node biopsy. Because the sentinel node came back positive for cancer, I underwent a 2/3 lymph node dissection in my right axilla and had to spend the night in the hospital.

The pathology report showed no cancer in the lymph nodes and that the surgical margins are clear. This means that I don't need more surgery and that cancer has not spread into my lymph system. The tumor measured 2.5 cm, and is staged as a T2, N1 tumor, Stage 2B.

I have just begun a 24-week course of chemotherapy (weekly infusions and daily oral) which will be followed by 6 weeks of daily radiation therapy.

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I found this poem the other day while searching the internet, which I find very inspiring:

What Cancer Cannot Do
Cancer is so limited...
It cannot cripple Love
It cannot shatter Hope
It cannot corrode Faith
It cannot destroy Peace
It cannot kill Friendship
It cannot suppress Memories
It cannot silence Courage
It cannot invade the Soul
It cannot steal Eternal Life
It cannot conquer the Spirit



I also have been inspired by song lyrics I have heard recently. These are by Lowen and Navarro:

From Blessing
How can I see the sunshine
Until I have faced the rain
How can I walk in beauty
Until I have stumbled in pain
How can I touch this moment
Until I have let it go
How will I find the answer
Unless I already know
The storm is passing now
And when it does
I'll open my eyes
And I'll see it as a blessing

Maybe Tomorrow It Will Rain
Daylight takes the long way around
Never mind the sun
It's only there to bring me down
But I ain't buying

Midnight takes a long, long time
To reach the other side
It haunts my soul and hurts my mind
But I keep trying

Time is my cover
It's my friend, it's my mother
It's my lawyer, it's my lover
If I make it through tonight

Maybe tomorrow it will rain
And wash these shadows from my windows
I know I'll never feel the same
But I can start all over

Sometimes I wish that I could fly
Take off for the sky
Soaring through this cloud I'm under
But nowhere is where I'm going fast
I know that it won't last
But lately all I hear is thunder

Trouble is my witness
It's my truth, it's my sickness
And it's no one else's business
To help me through tonight

Maybe tomorrow it will rain
And wash these shadows from my windows
I know I'll never feel the same
But I can start all over

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Heavy northern autumn sky
Mist-hung forest -- Dark spruce, bright maple --
And the great lake rolling forever to the narrow gray beach

I look west along the red road of the frail sun
Where it hovers between shelf of cloud and spiky trees,
Receding shore;

The world is full of seasons; of anguish, of laughter
And it comes to mind to write you this:

Nothing is sure
Nothing is pure
And no matter who we think we are
Everyone gets his chance to be nothing

Love's supposed to heal, but it breaks my heart to feel
The pain in your voice --
But you know, it's all going somewhere
And I would crush my heart and throw it in the street
If I could pay for your choice

Isn't that what friends are for?

We're the insect life of paradise:
Crawl across leaf or among towering blades of grass
Glimpse only sometimes the amazing breadth of heaven

You're as loved as you were
Before the strangeness swept through
Our bodies, our houses, our streets --
When we could speak without codes
And light swirled around like
Wind-blown petals,
Our feet

I've been scraping little shavings off my ration of light
And I've formed it into a ball, and each time I pack a bit more onto it
I make a bowl of my hands and I scoop it from its secret cache
Under a loose board in the floor
And I blow across it and I send it to you
Against those moments when
The darkness blows under your door

Isn't that what friends are for?

-Bruce Cockburn Isn't That What Friends Are For?

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