Breast Cancer - Day 365

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One year ago today I was diagnosed with breast cancer. In that time I have had four surgeries, fifteen cycles of chemotherapy, 181 doses of tamoxifen, five biopsies, four mammograms, two PET scans, one MRI, six echocardiograms, and countless exams, ultrasounds, blood draws, and secondary medications. I have shed many tears and lost many hours of sleep.

When I was first diagnosed, I couldn't believe that it had happened to me. Ridiculously, I kept thinking that I wasn't the kind of person who gets cancer. But the terrifying truth is that breast cancer can happen to anyone. It is the most common cancer in American women; about one in eight women in the U.S. will develop invasive breast cancer in her lifetime. An estimated 232,670 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed this year. And breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer. The good news is that breast cancer survivorship has tripled over the last 60 years, and there are currently 2.9 million breast cancer survivors living in the U.S. today. As I make the transition from patient to survivor, I am deeply grateful for the tests and drugs and surgeries, not to mention the doctors and patients that have gone before, that are now giving me such a good shot at long-term survival.

Tomorrow I will wake up and start my second year of breast cancer. I will receive Infusion #16, then #17 in three weeks, and three weeks after that I will receive #18 and be done with cancer treatment (other than the tamoxifen, which will continue for years). What happens then? I don't know. All I know is that I can't wait.

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