cancer

Life is a lot different with cancer. New latin words, tons of medical appointments, a lot less hair, and the constant question, “Am I okay?”. The short answer is no, I am not okay. But don’t worry it would be wierd if I was going through this and I was okay.

Since the cancer diagnosis I have started chemotherapy which has completely taken over my life and my family’s lives. Cancer has become the unwanted house guest that you can’t kick out. Every part of our lives revolve around whether or not I have treatment and if I feel ok, its extremely unfair to my family.

Everyone reacts differently in times of chaos. I react by withdrawing. I have a hard time retelling the same story over and over again. Bad news is never easy to deliver and it makes people feel awkward so I avoid it at all costs as a general rule. I do think its important for my family and friends to understand whats going on and where things are so here is the latest update since the last post.

After the biopsy and diagnosis I met with my onocoligist and we made a plan:

*5 months of IV chemotherapy the first 8 weeks would be A/C chemo also known as the “Red Devil” (is even worse than it sounds) every other week for 4 times.

*Next comes Taxol, a less severe but still awful IV chemotherapy drug for 12 weeks every week. Today I get my 3rd dose of Taxol and I completed the A/C.

*2 weeks after the last dose of Taxol I will have a double Mastectomy with no reconstruction (I will write about this later because I do get a lot of questions on this).

*4 weeks after the mastectomy I will start a hormone suppression drug that I will be on for 10 years, during that time I will also take a pill form of chemotherapy for 3 years called CDK it won’t be as bad as IV chemo but still be rough.

*I will also have 2 months of 5 days/week radiation treatment.

*Of course all these things can change based on whether I respond to them or not and what any scans I have say.

I actually have 2 different kinds of breast cancer so getting a plan of action is complicated. I am at stage 3b, this means the cancer has spread and the tumors are very large. I have a slow growing cancer that doesn’t respond to chemotherapy super well and I have a very fast aggressive cancer that responds very well to chemotherapy and the tumors have disappeared as far as I can tell in just 6 treatments. The slower growing tumor has unexpectedly gotten smaller which is amazing and gives me hope.

The cancer has metastasized which means it hasn’t stayed in my breasts, it has started to move to new places outside of my breasts. It’s common for breast cancer to move to lymph nodes and my cancer has moved to some lymph nodes inside my chest wall making surgery to remove the lymph nodes impossible so I am depending on the radiation to clean up any cancer in my chest wall after the surgery. The CDK pill should stunt any growth the cancer might try again.

Cancer has a very strange stigma to it, almost a taboo vibe. If you have cancer you must have done something to make yourself have cancer and it’s your fault. The common questions people ask are inquires of how I got it. “Did you smoke?”, “Did you take birth control?” and these questions are followed up by questions about how it got so far, “Did you get yearly mamograms?”, “Did you do self breast exams?” I’m left to try to explain why I got cancer to the best of my knowledge and why it wasn’t caught sooner but the reality is everyone is able to get cancer and everyone has reasons why it can get so far. Cancer doesn’t play by any rule book it’s like a sick game of musical chairs and no one is safe.

I am really sick. I’ve never been sick like chemo sick in my whole life, my bones are sick. Everyday I wake up with new side effects that are painful and weird and gross and scary. One day I woke up with black fingers, thankfully that has passed. My hair is still falling out which is more annoying than I could have ever dreamed. Everything tastes terrible, even water. I randomly throw up with little to no warning so I hate leaving the house and when I do I’m on heavy opioid anti-vomit drugs that make me very dopey and appear to be “Okay”, I’m not Okay I’m drunk. I am fatigued on a level that I’ve never experienced before, walking accross the kitchen feels like a 25 mile trek in the desert. I did get a blood transfusion and now that fatigue is getting a lot better.

I do need help. I need a lot of help. I have an amazing completely capable husband who is caring for me and driving me to all my appointments and holding the puke bucket and running the farm and taking care of the kids and cleaning the house and doing the laundry and running our dairy and working full time plus long hours to make up lost time for driving me to my appointments. All the while he has had a hernia surgery during all of this and has just found out that he has an extremely large prostate with no explanation. 20% of cases that present like his end up with a cancer diagnosis so he is soon to have a surgical biopsy. He is doing all of this in constant abdominal pain which led to the scan that found the pain is coming from his severe diverticulosis colon, harding bladder, and the oversized prostate that is causing the harding of the bladder and pushing on the colon and everything else. I always wondered if he could make it all work without me, the answer is 100% yes.

I also have 3 energetic capable girls that are stepping up to the plate in ways I had no idea they could. Edie is milking the cow and cooking and cleaning. Haesel is doing dishes and helping her dad with the farm. Aethel is carrying in firewood and feeding birds and folding clothes. I am very blessed with such an amazing family that has circled the wagons and stepped up to the plate without missing a beat.

My help needs help but they don’t need help that I have to orchestrate. My husband needs a call from someone offering help not asking what they can do. He is too weary and focused to look up and create a job. We have a farm. Anyone is welcome to call Cyning and come over on the weekend to help fence, scoop poop, move feed, care for animals, etc. The girls need play dates, rides, lunch dates, and help with chores. Maybe a chore play date? We have a house in Wheatland that needs to be fixed up and sold so that if I die Cyning can afford to care for the girls. Reread that. There is a very real possibility that I may not be here in a year or three years so we are seriously trying to put ourselves in a position that Cyning won’t lose everything, these are very scary times. If you’ve ever wanted to learn drywall or electrical work or plumbing or tiling or any construction trade here’s your opportunity. My husband needs a call from someone asking how he is doing because he is not okay.

What are my chances of recurrence? With chemotherapy, surgery and radiation alone I have a 50% chance that the cancer will come back and land in my bones or my lungs or my liver. If this happens I will have terminal cancer and my best prognosis is a 5 year life span. With hormone suppression and CDK chemo it goes down a little bit. I’m planning on surviving but I’m also making choices in my life that are harmonious with me not surviving. I’m writing letters for when the girls are 18, when they get married, when they have babies, etc. Everyone says you have to stay positive, keep your chin up, well I reckon that’s a little easier said than done when your’re looking at casket pricing to make sure you don’t bankrupt your family by merely dying. That being said I am focusing on my time with my family and savoring every smile and kiss.

I am incredibly blessed. I have everything I ever prayed for. God gave me the life I asked for and I feel so honored and blessed to have been chosen for such blessings. Whatever path God has set out for me I know that my family will think of me with love in their hearts and they will be blessed with all the things they pray for. If I die tomorrow I will die satisfied and full of love.

So to the original question, “Am I okay?”, No, I’m galaxies away from okay, so is my husband and my kiddos. We are very not okay. But life has seasons and we are in the turbulent “Not okay” season that’s just how it goes. Winter always leads to Spring, God hasn’t let me down yet.

Sitting here at 4 am is a bit surreal. I’m exhausted and sore, but I can’t sleep. I was diagnosed with Bilateral breast cancer yesterday, and quite frankly, I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m paralyzed by my body wanting peace and my inner ADHD wanting to bake a loaf of bread.

I’m really scared of losing my family or really being lost from my family, I should say. I found myself pleading with Google AI to give me a prognosis of survival and “Why did this happen to me?” I don’t have a huge amount of experience with AI, but oddly it was comforting to have on-the-spot answers with an almost human sensitivity.

I shouldn’t have cancer. I have no family history, I don’t drink or smoke or do drugs, I live on a farm and drink raw milk, I’m super active, and I breastfed children for over 8 years cumulatively. I’m the last person you would think would have cancer. I shouldn’t have cancer.

I immediately think of the Tim McGraw song where he says, “I asked him when it sank in
that this might really be the real end. How’s it hit ya when you get that kind of news?” He goes on to list fanciful adventures that his father embarked on to satisfy his bucket list. I heard this song a thousand times and wanted to think that if ever I received this kind of news, I may find myself on the back of a bull, grabbing life by the horns, fulfilling lost dreams, but it seems that all my desires are less exciting than old McGraw senior.

I want to see my children grow up and have children that I get to know and love. I want to go on an Italian vacation with my husband, just him and me, where we visit cheese factories and eat our way through the country and make love in stone villas with perfect yet old bodies. I want to read all the books sitting on my bookshelf in my room. I want to finally learn how to French braid my daughter’s hair so it doesn’t bubble up and fall out. I want to see them show their animals at the fair this year. I want to live my sweet little unimpressive life.

I’ve been asked plenty of times if I have yearly mammograms. The long answer is no. Why would I? I have no reason to think I would be a candidate for cancer. I also have incredibly dense breasts that are very hard to smoosh, even though they feel pretty saggy to me. I have come to find out that I should have actually been having ultrasounds not mammograms.

Around October of 2025, I started to have a sore spot on my chest. Aethel is just tall enough now that her head hits me right in that spot when she gives me big hugs. I thought I was getting bruised from her head; little did I know her head was leading me to finding a tumor. One night, as I lay in bed, I felt my “bruised” chest and found a rather large lump. Lumps on my breasts are very common and come and go, so I wasn’t too startled, but Cyning insisted I call the dr in the morning. I did. I got an appointment that same day, and the NP sent me for a diagnostic Mamogram and ultrasound. She also found another lump on the side that I could barely feel. I didn’t get that mammogram for almost 2 and a half months due to a lack of appointments.

I didn’t think anything of this. I’ve had cysts in the past, and I’m very used to my lumpy bumpy bumps, so I truly assumed that I would just be told its cyst and I’m fine. It became very clear that the 1 hr mammogram appointment that turned into a 3 hour appointment where they kept taking more and more images because my breasts are so dense that they can’t see, turning into the ultrasound where she was clacking away and taking measurements of several lumps I didn’t even know where there, that I was probably looking at something a bit more serious than a cyst.

The radiologist’s office immediately scheduled a biopsy, but they were 3 weeks out. A friend of mine encouraged me to be aggressive in demanding an earlier appointment, so I had to call down to Colorado to set up a biopsy for next Monday. I hate crossing that state line because I am so proud of Wyoming and all the amazing people here. We don’t need Colorado to float us! But actually right now I do. Wyoming doesn’t have the staff, the equipment, or the expertise to fully handle breast cancer in a swift, efficient way. I found out very quickly that Wyoming is the old jalopy in a Lamborghini race.

When I received the results from my mammogram and ultrasound, it became very clear that this was cancer. Apparently mammogram/ultrasounds are scored from 1 to 5 on a Bi Rad scale. 1 means go home, don’t worry your fine, 5 means this lump has a 95% of being cancer. I scored a 5 on both sides. My sweet husband kept pointing out that I had a 5% chance of it being nothing. At the biopsy appointment, we had a chance to speak to the dr and he pointed out my 5% chance of health, and she thwarted that immediately by saying it looked more like a 3% chance and referred to the lumps as cancer for the rest of the meeting. He was not deterred in his innocent hope until the biopsy report came back glaringly positive.

I was offered anti-anxiety medication for the biopsy, which I immediately dismissed. I don’t like pain or anxiety medication, and I’m pretty tough. Push through it and get on with it is pretty much how I do things. Until, the lidocaine didn’t take effect fast enough and as the giant needle in my breast took a pass to grab and extract a chuck of tumor it hit a nerve which felt like a shot of lighting through my breast into my belly button only to land on my spine which propelled me to levitate above the table like a shot and continue burning for several minutes after. I screamed the f word and started to sob uncontrollably,y with no one to really console me since I was totally sterile. It was in that moment that I realized I should’ve taken the drugs. From this point forward, I will be taking any and all drugs offered to me.

So here I sit with this long, painful journey ahead of me unsure of where the path will take me. I hope I don’t die, I hope I get more time. I’m scared of losing my breasts and going through chemotherapy and losing my hair and my teeth and feeling sick and looking scary to my kids and looking unattractive to my husband. I don’t want to do this; my inner 2-year-old wants to hit the ground and refuse to participate while I scream and cry. I don’t want cancer.

Tag: cancer

Update