Why we are doing what we are doing.

On December 16th Dawn and I’s life was changed forever. Our mom was diagnosed with Breast Cancer.
We had no idea what to expect nor how to react. The only way I knew to react was cry and Dawn’s was to be angry. “Why? Why did this happen to our mom”?
I think we begin to become complacent in life and we also think “my family will not be a statistic”. We don't even have cancer in our family so how can my mom have breast cancer?
Well sure enough a few agonizing days after that we met with the amazing Dr Kaplin at the Swedish Cancer Institute and confirmed the results. Thanks to a very good family friend who has been thru breast cancer herself we were able to get to see him. He was not taking new patients at the time.
We did not have any idea what the next few months had in store we just knew that our lives had changed.
After Mom saw Dr. Kaplin she got into see her Surgeon, Dr. Hanson. Wow he was an amazing man as well. The people at Swedish that took us through our very short journey (comparatively speaking) are absolutely amazing. These people have to deal with this horrible disease every day with thousands of people. They made Myself, Dawn, Mom and Dad feel like we were the only people on the planet and they TRULY cared. We went to every single appointment with Mom and Dad and they always had 4 chairs in the room and never once scrambled for them, they just did it.
There was no way around the fact that she was going to have to have her left breast removed completely. The mammogram and biopsies showed that mom had 2 spots that were classified as ductal carcinoma in situ (pre-cancerous) and 1 spot was ductal carcinoma and they were in very different spots that is why she couldn't just have a lumpectomy. After the initial meeting with doctor Hanson she had an MRI to make sure there was nothing else anywhere else. After they discovered that the “crap” was just in her breast they scheduled her surgery.
Four days before her surgery Mom decided that she may want to do a bilateral mastectomy because she didn't want to be lopsided or have to worry about this happening again. I got a hold of the nurse and asked her what we would have to do to change mom surgery. Well long story short we made an appointment to talk to Doctor Hanson one day before the surgery at eight in the morning. After some discussion it was a given that she was going to have a bilateral. Dr Hanson’s scheduler had told us that it was going to have to be a couple more weeks if mom wanted a bilateral. Dr. Hanson worked his magic and fit her in for the next morning so no waiting!
Mom handled surgery like a champ. They only had to take 2 nodes on one side and 1 on the other so we were very happy with that. When they did the testing on the nodes during surgery they came back clear but we would have to wait for about 6 days to make sure.
6 days later we met with Dr Hanson and he said the nodes were clear. We all were breathing a huge sigh of relief except mom because she had “the drains” in and it looked like they were going to have to stay in for a while. Right after our appointment with Dr. Hanson we went back to Dr. Kaplin for the treatment plan. Dr. Kaplin said he wanted to do 1 more test on the tumor itself before he ruled out Chemo and Radiation. This test was going to take about 3 weeks.
On February 1st, 2010 mom got a call at home from Dr. Kaplin at seven thirty at night to say that the her “Onco Dx” text came back better than he had ever seen. That means no Chemo and no radiation. So needless to say this was a very monumental day in our lives especially moms.
The last few months have been a whirlwind but all that is left are some mammograms for Dawn and I and a hormone pill for Mom for the next five years.
Mom’s story is a drop in the bucket compared to what some women go thru so that is why Dawn and I have decided to take on this journey to try and raise awareness and money for Breast Cancer. I know that If it wasn't for the research that the Susan G Komen fund has supported we would not have been so lucky.
We are going to do our little part and try this out and ya never know, this could become annual and you might even be compelled to join us.