On January 11th, 2009 I went to bed at 10:30 as usual with no other thoughts in my head except that I hoped the babies slept all night so that I could get some sleep. Little did I know that just 6 hours later, at exactly 4:30 AM my life would change FOREVER. Yes, that's right ... my life was changed forever when following a strong prompting from the Holy Spirit to do a self breast exam, I found a large lump. I knew immediately what it meant for me, and after an ultrasound, mammogram, and biopsy the worst was confirmed. I was a 31year-old wife and a mother of 2 kids under 2 who now had Stage 3 breast cancer. How could this be?!? I am a former Pediatric ICU nurse and I never in a million years would have EVER guessed that I would one day be a patient...much less a cancer patient. But that is now my story and I am proud to be able to share my journey with you all.
In January I had a lumpectomy, in February a mastectomy, then from March through August weekly chemo and finally September through November daily radiation. Needless to say this year has flown by for my family. We have been so wrapped up and consumed in everything "pink" that we have hardly had time to catch our breath. However, throughout this year I have found that I have always remained faithful to the promise that I made to God when I was first diagnosed. I told Him that no matter what happened, that I would praise Him for it. Now, don't get me wrong, there were many days when anger, fear, sadness and anxiety tried to consume me, but those are the days when God's grace simply abounded. It seemed that on those days especially that the perfect card, phone call, email, package, or hug would come. My eyes were opened to the perfect love of Christ through my Grace Community Church family.
There are many, many things that I have learned and am continuing to learn through this experience. Briefly, the most important thing that has happened to me has been a tremendous growth spiritually. Through that, I have seen the faithfulness of God and the way that He has been my strength through this. I have had to rely on Him and His promises more than any other time in my life. Am I glad that I got cancer? Nope. Has it been tremendously hard? Yep. But am I happy about what I have gained from it all? Yep!!! The other thing that I have learned through this is that my purpose and calling is to SERVE.... to serve other women who are battling breast cancer. We are all sisters in this and I just have a passion to make sure that my sisters are cared for. I want to meet you all, pray for you all, encourage you all, and help you all in any and every way that I can. I have partnered with fellow survivor Lynne Woodson to form Clarksville's newest breast cancer care group called SEE Pink. The acronym SEE stands for serve, empower, and educate which are the main things we want our group to be known for. We meet twice/month with one of those meeting being an informative one, and the other being our "wig out" night where we just hang out, have girl talk, watch movies, eat, shop, or whatever everyone feels like doing. We would love for this group to grow; as we know Clarksville is unfortunately full of women suffering with this "crappy" (sorry) disease. If you know someone with breast cancer, please refer her to us. Even if they choose not to join the group or come to meetings, we would still love to go to the Father on their behalf and pray for them. Our email address is www.seepink2.gmail.com
Posted on
Thursday, December 17, 2009
by Kelly Blevins