“I am going to the doctor tomorrow, and I am a little nervous, so I could use a few extra prayers if you can… I found a lump about the size of a medium to large marble. I haven’t noticed it before, so I’m hoping it is nothing.”
That message came from my mama one year ago December 11th and on January 2, 2019 she was diagnosed with stage two, grade three, triple negative breast cancer.
We were there the day she got her diagnosis. I was there for her first oncology appointment. I watched as her beloved EVHS wrestling team and the entire community rallied around her through treatment. I sat in the hallway at a food blogging conference with tears streaming down my face as I watched her ring the bell on her last day of chemo infusions. As a plan-change-hater myself, I’ve commiserated with her when the treatment plan changed and then changed again.
I watched my mama find her faith and use it to turn fear into fuel to rock her way through chemo infusions, ask for help (which if you know her is the hardest for her to do), advocate for herself, keep hold of her positive attitude through plan changes, infections, and the evil that is oral chemo.
I’ve witnessed her do hard things this past year, things she didn’t think she had the strength to do. Which if we’re being honest, she didn’t. But she knew He did. And so, she leaned on Him and did the things she didn’t think she could.
I don’t talk about it a lot, and I don’t say it enough, mostly because I can’t without ugly crying and partly because I just don’t feel like I have the right words to express just how proud of and inspired by her I am.
There literally aren’t words.
I can only hope to one day be like her and make her as proud of me as I am of her.
Hello! I’m Terryn – the wife, mother, food safety enthusiast, Stormy Kromer fanatic who has slightly (okay, a lot) random tendencies, dabbles in photography, and shares (maybe a little too much) here at FFB.