Breast Cancer Support Group in a Book

Contents Chapter Thirteen: Important and Discouraging Chapter One: The Nightmare from which I Cannot Awake Chapter Two: I Have Cancer Chapter Three: One God-made, One Man-made Chapter Four: The Chemotherapy Chain Chapter Five: Curly Hair at fifty-two Chapter Six: No Guilt Trips Please Chapter Seven: The Laws of Probability Don’t Matter—Until It Happens to You Chapter Eight: Therapies Chapter Nine: My Spiritual Side of Cancer Chapter Ten: Survivors Patti, Joann, and Helen Chapter Eleven: Marilyn—a Stem-cell Survivor Chapter Twelve: Andrea—a Survivor since Age 24 Chapter Fourteen: The Rest of Your and My Story  This book is copyrighted (c) Marilynne Todd Linford, 2016 The cover original art is copyrighted (c) Joan Crowther, 2013

Preface Welcome to Support Group in a Book .   It’s the book I wish I had been given along with my breast cancer diagnosis. I needed someone to talk with me openly about my options, my needs, my fears, my future. I needed to talk to someone who had been there . Support Group in a Book is designed to make you aware of options and to help you make decisions about your treatment and recovery. Support Group in a Book gives you the companionship of survivors to walk beside you. The book is about healing and the metamorphosis from feeling like a victim to knowing you are a survivor. It’s about learning the lessons cancer has to teach and moving forward better than before.             My husband and I went on a weekend outing to a small town in Wyoming and made reservations at a random bed and breakfast. As we drove up the winding road to the top of the hill, we found four cabins sitting on the edge of a cliff overlooking a spectacular valley. At the end of the road was a new home. A

Chapter Thirteen:  Important and Discouraging How many books have you read that begin with Chapter 13? I assume this is probably the first. And although I am not superstitious, the fact that this is number thirteen did not escape my attention. Chronologically this chapter should be next to last in the book, but I am putting it first to make an important and discouraging point about the treatment I received for my particular diagnosis of breast cancer In April of 2015, I noticed a slight thickening in my reconstructed breast at the topside of the breast near the breastbone. I knew it was statistically possible to get a local recurrence in a reconstructed breast since surgeons estimate they only get 97-99 percent of the breast tissue when they do a mastectomy. I went to my internist. She told me it didn’t seem like a lump but referred me to a surgeon. The surgeon said, “I’m trying very hard to be concerned about this, but it’s a reconstructed breast and it’s been nineteen years sinc