Faith, 10-Year Survivor, Living Like There's No Tomorrow

Faith's story is another testament to how much cancer changes your life, your outlook, and your whole attitude toward life. Live it to the fullest!

My name is Faith and I am almost an 11 year cancer survivor. My story starts back in 1998 my family and I were getting excited about going on vacation to Ohio to cedar point. One day I was in the shower and just rinsing of the soap and run my hand over my breast and felt something that was not normal it was a lump about the size of a quarter. I just brushed it off because I did not want to ruin our vacation. We stayed in a cabin for our vacation and one night I had finally told my husband what I have found. I was positive at that time that it was just something to do with my period. When we got home from our vacation I had made an appointment with my gynecologist and she reassured me that it could be nothing but wanted me to have a biopsy done on the lump. I followed up with a surgeon to have a biopsy done and come to find out he wanted to do a needle core biopsy. Not realizing what a needle core biopsy I went ahead with it and it was so painful the nurse had a hard time holding my feet down all I wanted to to was cry the pain was excruciating. Well about a week later the doctor called me and told me that I needed to come into his office to discuss the results of the biopsy and I was so positive that it was nothing that I insisted on her telling me over the phone and that was the worst mistake I have ever made. After I had received the bad news that the biopsy came back positive for cancer that is when it hit me and I sat down and cried for about an hour and then I basically slapped myself and told myself that I can beat this, I just have to get through this next visit to find out what I had to do to survive this disease. I went through a lumpectomy and they removed 13 lymph nodes and they all came back negative so the next thing to do was to start the treatments.
So I started chemotherapy and my first treatment I did at the doctors office the same day there was a serious storm coming through town and when I was almost down with my treatment we had lost power they say that a tornado and hit down in town and the streets were flooded. While this was all going on outside I was being rushed to the basement of the building for my safety until this storm was over, we had to wait about an hour. I made it through the first round of chemotherapy and radiation all at the same time. Radiation was an every day trip to midland. The radiation oncology department over there was the best. When I was almost done with my chemo I started to get my hair back and when I went for one of my radiation treatments one of the oncologist rubbed my hair and said that it felt like a baby chicks fur and then he asked me how I don't fall over because my feet are only a size 5. So they made the treatment like it was a vacation. When I finished my last treatment I went out and bought one of the oncologist a coloring book and crayons so he could learn to stay in the lines. when I was doing one of my treatments he made me laugh when he was trying to draw a line and had to redo the line from me laughing.
Chemotherapy on the other hand was not that easy I had a hard time with the second round which was called tamoxifen I had to go to grand rapids for the first treatment because they said that there might be an allergic reaction to this one and they were right about 20 minutes into the treatment i started to get the hiccups and they had to stop the treatment and give me benadryl. After about an hour waiting for the benadryl to kick in they let me go home and when I was walking down the aisle I felt like I was out on an all night drunk I rode home in the back seat of the car and my husband at the time told me when we got home that he had a flat tire so he and my son had to stop and change it and I don't remember that part of the trip at all. So I had to go back to the first set of chemo and finish with that. I lost all of my hair except for my eyebrows and to this day I do not grow a lot of hair on my legs.
When I was going through the chemo and loosing all my hair which was down to my rear my husband at the time decided to shave all of his hair of so I would not feel like the odd duck and everyone at work thought that was special. The first time that I started to loose all my hair I was in the shower and I had to unclog the drain three times before I was done so when I was finally out of the shower I had my husband shave my head and then I set in the bedroom by myself and just cried again.
Every year since being diagnosed with breast cancer I have gotten an ornament for the tree at Christmas to mark another year of being cancer free. On my ten year anniversary of being cancer free I decorated our tree in all pink. That was such an accomplishment knowing that I have beaten this disease and live to tell my story. So much more to go on about this story on how I survived this disease and the other life challenging decisions that I have had to make to go along with this disease like divorcing my husband because he would not quite drinking. I know that probably sounds rude but after going through cancer and surviving it you tend to think that there is better out there someone who takes life sober. Also surviving cancer makes people think about how they came so close to not being able to see things or experience things in life that just days ago you thought you would never see or do. So I made decisions that would allow me to grasp the chance to live my life like it wont be there tomorrow.