Blogging For Breast Cancer

On October 1, 2004 I had a right mastectomy.

The series was originally published in 2007, and has since been expanded; it seems to grow each year. It appeared on several blogging platforms and I have retained the original comments from people who visited from all over the world. Looking back at the original blogs gives me strength. I link to it annually to fundraise and inspire. The series is called Blogging for Breast Cancer.

Cancers of the breast vary as do their treatments, from person to person. Sometimes we are faced with hard choices. 

But that’s just the physical part.

The emotional and psychological tolls are evidenced by everyone who has been given a cancer diagnosis: Don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t traumatic.

The diagnosis begins with a face-to-face journey in the mirror of oneself: there is a confronting of one’s mortality. We stand there blind-sided, mugged, in disbelief. Sometimes we blame ourselves and become guilt-ridden. One friend said it must have been her fault because of all the ice cream she ate.

We look upwards and ask “Why.?” We walk away from the mirror after bidding goodbye to body parts, security, shadow beliefs—this could never happen to us—and we try to digest that cancer is just one more challenge to face and that we have to accept it and move on. The initial trauma continues to lurk and buzz in the background, long after surgery and treatments. The fear of a return is always there, and the sigh of relief after subsequent mammograms can be heard world-wide.

Somehow, though, we do move on, in incremental moments, and, get caught back up in the net of life and just keep going. 

The links below will lead you through my experiences, from childhood observations to 2004, when cancer was discovered; the beginning, up until the present, because what I thought ended in 2004 did not.

I hope this series widens your understanding and provides you with information that could help you, or another, make decisions.

Finally, know that you will be OK.

 

 

 

The Beginning

Part 1. Spinning at 45 rpm’s: Wake Up Little Susie
My journey starts here, as a child, visiting Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY

Part 2. Spinning at 45 rpm’s: Bye, Bye Love
The summer of 1959, the ride is beginning.

Part 3. Spinning at 45 rpm’s: Beyond The Sea
Revelation in a bathhouse.

Part 4. Say It Isn’t So
2004: Facing my fears: cancer

Part 5. And It Stoned Me
The first biopsy

Part 6. The Nipplemania Newsletter: Doctor, My Eyes
I find out the ultimate as I leave my son at his first year of college

Part 7. The Nipplemania Newsletter: Falling Off The Face Of The Earth
A newsletter is born and helps me work through my fears

Part 8. Recovery: Comfortably Numb
Revelation with the final biopsy.

Part 9. The Nipplemania Newsletter: Did Ye Get Healed?: Important Info
On the mend issue

Part 10a. The Cats that Saved Me:
On a Formerly Feral Feline Family and the C Word

Part 10.b. I Just Want To Thank You: More Info and a Poem From Jay, and Bill, too
Comments, support, information

Part 11. Recipe For a Memory
Linda died of breast cancer but her memory lives on–in the best chocolate cheesecake recipe ever

Part 12. Spending Time With the Nanny
Fran Drescher survived cancer, too
Photos of Fran Drescher, 2 parts: 12, 13

Part 13. Cancer Survivors’ Day Celebration With The Nanny (2007)

Part 14. Poetry: The Nipple Song
A little humor thrown in; I met my (2007) cancer walk goal

Part 15. My First Cancer Walk (2007)

Part 16. Final Words On Breast Cancer Awareness
myths debunked

Part 17. Spending Time With Julia Sweeney (2008)
another cancer survivors’ celebration, another year

The Story Continues

2010
Part 18: On Relationships: Make-up Meltdown: and then he touched me
An event triggers a painful flashback
October 1, 2010: it is the 6 year anniversary of being cancer-free.

2012
Part 19: ” I have no insurance but, I have faith” -Leslie Helene Elder
In memoriam: she died too young

2013 
Part 20: Thoughts on Breast Cancer: A Mere Trip to Italy
Everything can cause a memory

2021

Part 21. Cells
Just When Your Plate is Overflowing …

Part 22. The Nipplemania Newsletter, 2021 Edition: Good News
When “good news” is a loaded term

Part 23. The Nipplemania Newsletter, 2021 Edition:The Yin and Yang of “Benign”
Good news comes with a price

2022  Cancer Returns

Part 24. The Nipplemania Newsletter, 2022 Edition: Sneaky
There it is again!

Part 25. The Return of Cancer: What’s Old Is New Again: Serenity Now!
Cancer is full of surprises

Part 26. Cancer: The Grinch That Stole Christmas
Does looking back to childhood bring hope? 

2023

(Part 27. Cancer), (Part 286. →Husband Journey) A Confluence: Who Knows Where The Time Goes?
Blog themes overlap…husband and cancer)

(Part 28. Cancer), (Part 287. →Husband Journey) A Mastectomy? Carry On
When fear keeps you on the couch, David Crosby pulls you off

Part 289. →Husband Journey & (Part 29. Cancer) I Heard it Through The Grapevine
The associations and memories are forever tangled and knotted and wound together. All the picking at them and trying to un-loop them seems to knot them even tighter.

Part 30: Ported From Angel Network Posts: Blogging for Breast Cancer, Second Round
After nineteen years of quiet, addressing the return of breast cancer

Part 31: Ported From Angel Network Posts: Blogging for Breast Cancer: Tired 
Now on a “wound vac”

Part 32. Blogging For Breast Cancer: What I Thought I Knew
Invasive carcinoma

Part 33: Blogging For Breast Cancer: While Waiting for The Visiting Nurse: Vulnerability
When a quart of milk makes one uneasy

Part 34: Blogging For breast Cancer: Facing Another Surgery
Another upcoming surgery days away to revise the recent mastectomy reconstruction

Part 35: Blogging For Breast Cancer: The Conundrum
Then there is the assembly line, waiting to go into an operating room, the triage.

 

2024

Part 36: Blogging for Breast Cancer: It’s Complicated
I had breast cancer twice. I never had any of the symptoms.

 

 

 

 

more to come …