Marlene's Not-So-Secret Diary

The first few weeks after diagnosis is a blur. Your overwhelmed with information and emotion. You don’t know what to do and you feel like the crying will never end. I HATED telling people. Reliving my horrible new reality in every call. It actually took me a while before I could say I have Cancer without crying. Hearing the surprise or sadness in people voices when you tell them. To not feel guilty by telling people the news and burdening them with this type of heavy inf...Continue reading

You have Cancer I felt like my Doctor dropped a bomb in my back yard which blew up half my house and didn’t leave me with so much as a hammer or even a few nails to help me rebuild. The day I found out I recall getting home and sitting down on the couch stunned. Thinking. Processing. My phone was ringing and flashing with messages but I needed time. Mathew was on a work call so I patiently waited to tell him and fall apart until he was done. ...Continue reading

The day of my Mammogram and Ultrasound I was relatively calm. I didn’t think I had cancer. That was something that happened to other people. Something you worried about but then feel ridiculous for because it turned out to of course be nothing. It was likely just cysts. I was just in getting a procedure done. Nothing to worry about. Just a check up. October 29th (a Thursday) I sat in the waiting room dressed in hospital clothes working. Of course I was working I was always ...Continue reading

Summer 2020 was a happy one despite the chaos taking place around the world. We practically lived outside in the yard, there was a ton of quality time with our small ish bubble, work had picked back up and was starting to feel normal again. Life was good. We were blissfully unaware of how in the upcoming months our lives would be turned upside down. August 29th (another day in a series of dates I will never forget) was the day I found the lump. It was early morning and I w...as in the living room just starting to get the day going with the kids and BY FLUKE my left inner upper arm brushed against my left breast and I felt something. I say fluke because I always had a bra on and for some reason that morning I wasn’t wearing one and fluke because I tried to replicate this motion of my arm brushing against the lump several times after the fact and never did feel it again in the same way I did that day. I remember thinking That’s weird and when I went to feel with my hand, sure enough it was a lump. A few hours later I was speaking to an online Doctor and getting a referral for an Ultrasound. As bad as Covid has been in many ways it has also given us some blessings. Online doctors appointments being one of them. In all honesty had it not been so easy , who knows how long I would have waited to make the appointment or if I would have forgotten about making an appointment at all. Life can just become so crazy day to day. That initial Ultrasound never did end up being booked (due to backed up wait lists) when again I had to see my Doctor for a car accident I had been in. Another happy co-incidence as bad as it seemed at the time. Because when I saw my doctor in person mid September and she did a physical breast exam, she found 2 lumps. Not just the one I had noticed. It was at that point she referred me to RCH for both a Mammogram and Ultrasound seeing as I wasn’t getting a response from Medray. I was diligent about getting on the cancellation list and followed up more then once to ensure I got the appointment as quickly as possible. I wasn’t stressed or particularly worried (I was certain it was cysts) but it was like something subconsciously was pushing me to. By October 29th (two months (exactly) after all this started) I was in!

After two days of feeling bad that I haven’t kept up with something I’ve started (this blog), I’ve decided to give myself the grace to let it go. I’m tired, not well right now, this last round of chemo kicked my behind.... and IT’S OK.