Chapter 2 Part II

When I went back to work the next day, I had to let my Department manager and the store manager in on my condition. My boss Jenny knew I had, had an important test but I had not told her the details. They were both very concerned for me and quite sympathetic. I told them I would surly need surgery but did not know where it would go from there. That same day I received a call from the imaging center telling me that the results of my biopsy would be delayed for a day or two due to the storm. This put me at the 23^rd or 24th (Christmas Eve) before I could expect a definitive diagnosis. As you can immagine, I was a nervous wreck! I found myself crying at the drop of a hat and I’m sure people at work realized something was up.

My doctor called the store on the 23rd with the results but since I was on break, someone else answered the phone and didn’t bother to take a message or even tell me anyone had called. When I clocked out at the end the day, I found a couple of messages from Dr. Mino on my cell phone. The first said that he had called work and couldn’t reach me so I should call him at the office ASAP. The second was much later in the day, he said he was leaving the office for the day and wouldn’t return until after Christmas, but to call the answering service and tell them to call him and he would call me with the results. I called the service from work but they refused to

call Dr. Mino even though I told them he had specifically told me to have them call him personally. They said they would have the on-call Doctor call me. Well, he never called although I called back twice to try to contact someone and so I went through Christmas Eve and Christmas day with out finding out the results.

On the day after Christmas I was home, so I waited impatiently For 8:30am (when the Doctors office would open) so I could call Dr. Mino. Although I already knew it was cancer I wanted to know what exactly, I was dealing with. I got through to the office and the Doctor came on the line in short order. He broke the news to me as gently as possible. “Well my dear,” he said, “it’s bad news, but it’s the best possible secenario for the bad news.” He told me it was a “stage one ductal carcinoma in situ”. Which means the cancer was localized in the milk duct and there was no evedence of any cancer cells in the Lymph nodes. He also told me that this form of cancer is one of the slowest growing cancers as well as one of the most sucessfuly treated. He had done his homework and had phone numbers for me of a surgon and an oncolegest who were accepted by my insurance as well as very well respected in our area. He also gave me the phone number of a support group. He told me to feel free to call him with any questions and to try to keep the worry to a minimum since the prognosis for this early stage cancer was very good. I immediately called the Oncologests office and made an appointment for their first available opening, which wasn’t until January 8^th.

call Dr. Mino even though I told them he had specifically told me to have them call him personally. They said they would have the on-call Doctor call me. Well, he never called although I called back twice to try to contact someone and so I went through Christmas Eve and Christmas day with out finding out the results.

On the day after Christmas I was home, so I waited impatiently For 8:30am (when the Doctors office would open) so I could call Dr. Mino. Although I already knew it was cancer I wanted to know what exactly, I was dealing with. I got through to the office and the Doctor came on the line in short order. He broke the news to me as gently as possible. “Well my dear,” he said, “it’s bad news, but it’s the best possible secenario for the bad news.” He told me it was a “stage one ductal carcinoma in situ”. Which means the cancer was localized in the milk duct and there was no evedence of any cancer cells in the Lymph nodes. He also told me that this form of cancer is one of the slowest growing cancers as well as one of the most sucessfuly treated. He had done his homework and had phone numbers for me of a surgon and an oncolegest who were accepted by my insurance as well as very well respected in our area. He also gave me the phone number of a support group. He told me to feel free to call him with any questions and to try to keep the worry to a minimum since the prognosis for this early stage cancer was very good. I immediately called the Oncologests office and made an appointment for their first available opening, which wasn’t until January 8^th.

Chapter 2: Part I

Chapter 2
The Storm Begins
　
　

The next night we had the biggest snowfall in recorded history for a 24-hour period in the City of Longmont. 24 inches fell in less than 24hours. Streets were impassable, businesses and schools were closed, and few people went to work that next day. As the biopsy was considered minor surgery, I was on lifting restrictions for 2 weeks. I was not supposed to lift anything over 15#. As you can imagine this made it difficult to shovel two feet of snow. My mother had spent the night in Boulder with one of her clients because of the storm. Jes and I were at home with Jacob and Ashlee. We went out and started to dig out.                                                                                                                                                              

I was able to push a shovel full of snow but was unable to to lift it with just my right hand. Consequently, Jes ended up doing most of the work. Once we got the driveway cleared and Jesses SUV unburried, we decided to use it and worry about my car later. We left Jacob at home with Ashlee and headed out to check on the beauty salon. Jes called to cancel any clients who had not already called to cancel. We headed across to the other side of town and she dropped me off at the grocery store, where I worked as a cake decorator.

I arrived at work about 2 hours later than usual, as soon as I walked in my coworkers told me I had better get my staples as the store was already running low on Milk, Bread and eggs. Since we did not know when the next truck would get to Longmont from Denver I decided to pick up what we needed as well as some extra things for the neighbors and a family friend who was unable to get out on her own. We all pitched in together at work to make up for the people who were unable to get to work. The entire store was running with about half our usual staff. Boy were people grumpy! Whenever there is a storm people usually flock to the store. The people who were able to get out were like “locust” they were buying every thing they could get their hands on. When we run out of something people, have a fit. Some people seem to think that there are trees growing in the back of the store and we just go out and pick cartons of milk and loaves of bread off as needed. They do not seem to understand that we depend on trucks arriving several times daily to bring items into the store, when that does not happen we run out fast!

After work, Jes picked me up and we stopped by our friend Bobbies with some of the grocerys I had picked up. When I got home I found that Jes, Ashlee and some of her friends had finished shoveling the drive and dug out my car as well as Ashlees. Mom arrived from Boulder shortly after and we all sat down to dinner.

The “farmers Almanac” had accurately predicted the storm and they were predicting seven more storms over the next 7weeks.

All of the storms came to pass but fortunately, not all of them were as dramatic as the first.

Lets try again.

Last time I tried to get this up and running my computer crashed. So with hope for a better out come this time I'll be starting again. Found this on Facebook and wanted to share. Please re-read the first post and then I'll be adding to the story regularly, with some resourses and insperational stories and quotes.

The adventure begins!

                                                                        Prologue
              It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out, the maid screamed, a door slammed!…
　
　
…Just kidding, actually it all began on a cool clear autumn afternoon.

 You know the kind of day I’m talking about, that first real cold snap, when the “dog days” of summer are still close enough to make you look forward to winter with relish. You know, the football games, hot chocolate by the fireplace, that first glistening blanket of snow [and the snowball fights and snow angels that go with it] that is until you remember that you have to shovel all that snow and you’ll freeze every time you walk out the door. Well, we were about to be “snowed under” in more ways than we could imagine!

                                                                     Chapter 1

                                                              Oooh that’s weird!!

It was the Weekend after Thanksgiving; I was outside raking leaves with my son Jacob and Sister Jessica at the home we had just purchased with our Mother. We didn’t have any trees in our back yard but thanks to the abundant shade we had enjoyed from our neighbors trees, our yard was ankle deep in crisp brown and red leaves. Jacob was helping [that is to say he was raking the same pile over and over again and jumping into it] and I was holding the bags open while Jes filled them. We were almost done and Jes had just gone to get one last bag. I had my winter coat on but hadn’t bothered to wear gloves; my hands were cold so I put them under my arms to warm them. As I pressed my arms in to hold in the warmth, I felt something under my left arm. Just a little something, kind of a thick feeling little lump.
I didn’t say anything to anyone and when we went inside I went into the bathroom to check it out. It didn’t seem like much so I thought I’d just watch it for a while.

 Over the next week I did breast exams in the shower and lying down several times to see if the lump changed at all or [please, God!] went away. Then one night I was lying in bed on my side and I felt it with my right hand. I could feel this hard little pea sized thing inside of the larger lump. Now, I have never been one to do self-exams religiously, but I did it often enough to know that this was not right! I Called my doctor the next day and made an appointment for the following Monday. During my appointment, Dr. Mino examined me and after feeling the lump told me not to worry, it was probably just a cyst. He recommended that I schedule a mammogram.

I called and scheduled a mammogram for the next week. They called me the day before to reschedule me for the next week due to an emergency. At this point I still had not told anyone about the lump. I figured, why worry anyone else if it turned out to be nothing. I was finally rescheduled for my mammogram on Dec. 19 2006. When I arrived at the imaging center they informed me that they would do the mammogram followed by an ultrasound. They do this routinely when anyone comes in with a lump. They questioned me about where the lump was located and marked the area with a sticker, then took several films of both sides. Then I was escorted to the ultrasound room by “Missy” the ultrasound tech. As she was prepping me for the ultrasound, the radiologist “Dr. Guterrez” came in to talk to me. I could tell by the look on her face that she had bad news. She said she had some concerns about the results of the mammogram and felt I should have an immediate biopsy. At this point Missy came over and was holding my hand. I began to cry as I asked the Doctor if she thought it was cancer. She said “yes”, then I asked her how sure she was and she said she was 90% sure, but the biopsy would confirm her diagnosis. Now I don’t know about you, but the way I figure it, any Doctor would have to be nuts to tell you they were 90% sure about anything, unless they were 110% sure. I was still crying at this point and Missy was still holding my hand and patting my back. Dr. Guterrez said it looked like a small tumor and we had caught it early. Both Dr. G and Missy were so kind and compassionate they spoke to me gently and offered lots of encouragement. I have heard several cases where people were just dumped on by the doctor or nurse who told them they had cancer. I guess I got lucky to have two such kind compassionate people break the news to me.

Dr. G performed the biopsy right there on the ultrasound table. They numbed me up with a shot of Lidocaine, made a couple of small incisions and did a “needle asperation” of the lump and of two lymph nodes in the armpit. The doctor told me I would hear from Dr. Mino with the results in a couple of days. They stitched up the incisions, bandaged me up and I got dressed.

I was stunned as I left the office and got into my car. I started up my car but just sat in the parking lot crying. I could not pull myself together. I mean, come on!, a single mothers worst nightmere, “CANCER”!! Well I couldn’t just sit in the parking lot all day crying, and since Jacob was home sick with my niece Ashlee, I decided to to go to my Sisters hair salon. I walked in the back door of the salon to find several ladies sitting in the chairs. Jes was shampooing a client and I walked up to her and told her I needed to talk to her when she had a minute. I must still have looked pretty upset because her first reaction was to ask “What happened?!” “Who’s hurt? What’s the matter?!” I told her I needed to talk to her in private, so one of the girls finished shampooing her client. We went out the back door to the parking lot and she said “what’s going on?” I told her “I have breast cancer!” and began to cry all over again. She put her arms around me and started to cry too. I told her what the Doctor said about it being a small tumor and catching it early. We talked a bit longer and then we tried to pull ourselves together. We went back into the shop and I sat in the kitchen for a while to calm down.

Jes finished up with her client and came in to check on me. I had calmed down some by then and she sat with me a while longer and talked. She called home and told Ashlee I would be home in a little while. I stayed for a while longer and some of the girls at the shop came in to talk to me. One of the Distributors came in, gave me a hug, and told me he was sure everything would be okay. Jes and I talked about it and decided to wait until after Christmas to tell the family what was going on. I did not want to spoil everyones holiday with worry when nothing could be done about it until after the New Year anyway.