During Breast Cancer Awareness Month, talk about it, get a mammogram, do self-exams, and if you are a guy, encourage the women in your life to do them, and remember it can happen to you.
So many suffer alone waiting through exams and treatments, hoping to wake up from the cancer nightmare. That’s what my mom chose. At the age of 35, when I was a high-school senior, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. There was no discussion. Instead, she asked me to babysit so she could go for a ride. I was at the stove frying an egg in that tiny frying pan that rarely gets used, and my answer was some smart mouth remark about hanging out with friends instead of babysitting. Her reply was, “I found out I have cancer and I need to go for a ride.”
Two days after her 36th birthday and my graduation party, she had a radical mastectomy, and I was there to care for her, my eight-year-old sister who was in elementary school, and my brother who was almost one. We didn’t talk about it, and didn’t know how to cope with it.
Three years later, when my other brother was a senior, the cancer came back in her bones, and was beyond treatment. She had 6–8 months to live. I was with her for his high-school graduation, and then the final school events for the younger two kids. I watched her cry, but we never talked about that, or how she likely wouldn’t live long enough for her first grandchild to be born. It was just too much.
She died shortly before her 40th birthday. We lived what we learned, and never really talked about it. I was almost 22, my brother was almost 19 and was three months from becoming a dad, my sister was 13, and the youngest was almost five. We did the best we could, but we were lost, having no rule book. Later, my her mom and her only sister would have breast cancer, and one of her brothers would have prostate cancer.
Today is the day to take the first step, to pick up the broken pieces and start to put them back together. There is no need to do this alone. If you’ve been through it, you can learn to cope with the trauma cancer has caused. There are no right answers, but there are ways to get to the other side and begin to heal.
Please look up how to do a self breast exam, and then encourage someone else to do the same. If you need to talk, I’m here, and I’m pretty easy to find. I don’t have the answers, but I can listen.
Pastor Tera Kossow is the pastor of Eden Lutheran Church, Munising, MI. She admits she’s not an expert in anything except surviving a lot of traumatic experiences.
