Shellie’s journey with breast cancer

CRESCO - It has now been eight months since I was diagnosed. It has not been easy, that is for sure. 

In the last segment, I mentioned some about how people react to me on a daily basis. I wanted to touch on that a little more. Since January my life has changed a lot. 

Instead of the easy carefree person I was, I am now always worried about the small things in life. I just have to remind myself that I cannot change the diagnosis, but I can change the way I fight it!  

I choose to go into this battle being positive that I would kick this cancer. It was not always easy to stay positive but with the friends who have stuck by me, the ones who have sent cards and my wonderful co-workers who sent cards and flowers I have remained positive. 

I joined a support group on the Internet, and I have to say that some of the people on there are very negative. It is like they have already written their death papers when they were diagnosed. I honestly feel that if I went into this with a different attitude I would have felt horrible the whole time.

I finished chemo in June and already had a surgery date scheduled for July 19. 

The waiting is horrible. Not knowing what will happen was the worst for me. I do not like going into things without knowing what is coming. 

December of 2015 I had back surgery and my general surgeon at Mayo told me this surgery would be easy compared to back surgery. I was happy to hear that because my back surgery was very painful. 

 July 19 I had a bi-lateral mastectomy. I was only in the hospital for one night . . . which was long enough. They do not let you sleep much. I think they woke me up every hour to see how my pain was. I finally told them that if I was sleeping then I must not be in much pain. So they finally let me stay sleeping, and boy did I regret that. I was in so much pain. I guess they know what they were doing.

The following week I had a check-up with my oncologist. She had some great news. All the tissue they removed was negative for any active cancer! The tumor and lymph nodes both had dead cancer cells. The surgeon was able to get a clear margin completely around the tumor area. I will still need radiation. That will be coming in September.