“Dear God, please help mama’s boob. Make it not hurt.”

“Dear God, please help mama’s boob. Make it not hurt.”

The beginning stages of knowing you have cancer are weird.

One day, your schlepping 100lb boxes of meat, clueless to the hell inside your body. And the next day, they tell you that you have cancer and in a nanosecond everyone puts you in bubble wrap.

You then walk around knowing, but forgetting. Because yesterday, you were oblivious and today, you’re as sick as you’ve ever been in your 42 years. And oddly enough, it’s hard to remember that your body is fighting for its life.

And when you talk to customers in the Marketplace or go to the bank or at the gas station, you want to tell people but also don’t want to burden them. It’s like we need a ticker tape, that reads our problems. “Pregnancy loss.” “Mom died.” Neighbor stole my tomatoes right out of my dang garden.” “Found out yesterday that I have breast cancer.” I suppose they’ll know when I start losing my hair.

I can see two silver linings from all of this:

1. Now my 8 month old won’t be able to take her little hands and use her Herculean grip strength and rip fistfuls of my hair out of my head and;

2. Just maybe the chemo will curb my cursed Schutte uni brow and 5’ o clock shadow. Damn genetics. I’ll save money in razors, too. (That’s a lie. I pretty much stopped shaving when I got married. 😉)

I have breast cancer. I caught it early (thought it was a clogged duct as I’m still breastfeeding). But it’s aggressive. So we’re moving aggressively. And it’s all going so fast.

For those curious of the particulars; I have high risk triple negative breast cancer. I’m at a T2. My port for the drugs is being put in Thursday. I’ll start chemo and immunotherapy on Tuesday. First round is six hours and I’m gonna feel it for sure. I’ll go back and do it all over again, every week, for 24 weeks. Rinse. Repeat. That puts us at Christmas. We will then re-evaluate to see what kind of surgery will be needed to remove the tumor and will most likely do 4-6 weeks of radiation, 5 days a week. I will also have genetic testing done to see if I have any of the genetics markers that led to me getting breast cancer so young. (I do like that all these doctors and nurses are calling me young). If I do test positive for the BRCA gene, that puts a very different spin on what we do in January 2023.

Needless to say, we have a loooong road ahead of us. I don’t know what to say, think or feel. It seems all so fake. Like this isn’t really happening. I feel completely healthy. Other than being tired. But I’m a mom, aren’t we all tired?

I suppose It will become more real when that port goes in Thursday. Our four year old said it best in his bedtime prayers. If you want to help, simply do this; Pray for mama’s boob not to hurt. Amen

#savejenniesjigglers (Hashtag credit to my great friend Sara Thieding Zinck)