Everybody Hearts

December 16, 2012

Hello friends and family,

This is a tough email to write. I’m writing it on the weekend in the hopes that you are at home when you receive it, or at the very least not at work. I would have preferred to share the news in person or on the phone, but time seems to be moving very fast these days.

A little while ago, I found a lump in my breast. After several tests (mammogram, MRI, biopsy), I have been told that I have breast cancer. Unfortunately, it has spread to my lymph nodes so the doctors think I am in stage 2 or 3. Everything is happening very quickly and they want to be aggressive in treating the cancer, so I will be starting chemotherapy this week (probably Wednesday the 19th). The treatments will last for 18 weeks, at which point they will perform a (single or double) mastectomy. They are also recommending radiation treatment after the surgery. So the next many months are going to be very hard.

My mother has just arrived from Vancouver so she will be here when I start the treatment and to help out with Nate. Thankfully, Nate is blissfully unaware of what’s going on. He is all smiles and laughter which gives me great comfort.

There have been some very scary and sad moments in the past little while, but, and I know this sounds cheesy, there have also been some pretty powerful moments of unexpected laughter and expressions of love. I feel well-supported and, at the moment, strong and as ready as I’ll ever be to fight this thing.

Please feel free to be in touch or ask for updates. If I don’t respond right away, don’t worry but know that any words of encouragement/support are welcome and will have brightened my day.

Love you.

Me and Nate on Family Day (Feb 18, 2013)

The purpose of this blog is pretty simple.  It’s to keep friends and family up to date with how the treatment is going.  It’s to  document the challenges and the triumphs of treatment and all those moments in between. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear from people via email/text/phone etc, but it does mean that when we do chat, we can focus on other things rather than the treatment update. Plus, I can post pics of little Nate here!

Mitchell and Nate on our Family Day walk.

Before the diagnosis, I had wanted to start a blog just about the everyday things I was up to, but it turns out that all my everyday things keep me very busy! So, the blog fell off my radar. I had settled on a blog title, “Everybody Hearts,” because I liked the idea of blogging about things I like, pop culture, trends, design-y stuff etc. After my diagnosis in December, I thought about blogging again. And I decided to stick with the same blog title because I liked the positive spin on the song “Everybody Hurts,” because yes, everybody hurts, but everybody hearts too.