I heard the most incredible words this week, "You are low risk and will not require chemo."  I had to ask the doctor to pause before we moved on to discussing preventative care to celebrate!  I loudly shouted a wahoo! and pumped my arms in the air and Dr. Chipman and his PA where grinning broadly as I then said, "okay we can carry on".  

As of now I humbly, gratefully and ecstatically can pronounce I AM A CANCER SURVIVOR.

This challenge has been one of the most difficult of my life, but so much incredibly easier than the many women warriors I have fought throughout my journey.   Their stories of immense sadness, pain and bodies that are rummaged down to nothing are in my mind as I now see the massive bullet I have dodged. The day I found out my final chemo "no go", I had walked into the "chemo room" at the doctors office and could physically feel the wave of difficulty, sadness and immense challenges each of the women sitting in their chairs busying themselves on their phone, a puzzle or reading while their chemo tube pumped those toxic drops of hope for a longer life into their bodies.  People will say congratulations you did great like I had any control over my results, the only choice I really had was how aggressive to be in surgery and then it is a waiting and mind control game as you wait for each test to come back over the next 6 weeks.  I was immensely fortunate that my cancer was a low grade, stage 1 and caught early. 

The other day someone asked me, "so what was your one takeaway".  That one is easy, it's that my life is now about people.  All you think about is the relationships in your life.  The impact cancer had on my family, the potential impact if I were not to make it, the relationships that are not as strong as they could be, the toxic people that I should have never allowed to stay involved or impact me emotionally personally or at work, the immense knowledge of the huge network of people that surround me every day and didn't really recognize how really massive and full of love it is until I was diagnosed. To have the opportunity to see just how much you are cared for and loved is one of the most precious gifts I have ever received.  It is the one thing I take out of this experience, the importance of people.   

What I now see is the things that don't matter because it's those things you don't think about when fighting for your life.   You don't think about your to do lists and how many items need to get done, you don't think about your career, you don't think about how much money your have, you don't think about how clean your house is, you don't think about what you don't have instead you are thinking about how much you want to keep what you do have and how incredibly blessed you really are.

My relationship with Andrew, my ability to be a fabulous wife, mother, step-mother, friend, colleague, partner, sponsor, and mentor.  This is what matters.   This is what life is about, and I truly believe that when we get done in this world and we do a tally at the end we won't be tallied on how big our companies are, or how many hours at the office, how many church callings we had, what title we ended up with... we will tally the quality of our relationships and the impact we were able to have to those around us.  Take time to build others, improve the quality of your relationships, look outside of yourself and make a difference.

Be Strong. Stay Strong.

Trina