Mange Venter Mig (Danish). Much Awaits Me. Self-confidence, possibility, faith, and hope – these unyielding elements have propelled me to achieve many things in my life about which I have been proud. Leadership of my high school class; first college degree in an extended second-generation American family; a distinguished graduate degree; a corporate career; the launch and successful management of a small business; civic leadership; elected public office; marriage; and the birth of two amazing children. All highlights in a forward life continuum. Striving, multi-tasking, and juggling were my lifestyle. Overachieving, I was driven by the belief that always there is a next step in life, more rewarding than the last. Ridiculous optimism? Perhaps. Innate determination? Most definitely. Foolish? Perhaps. Much awaited me, just around the next bend… and the next.
Practically from birth I was out to prove something – to the world, to anyone that doubted, and mostly to myself. I am woman. I can do it all. I can run a business full time with my beloved mom, while concurrently working in marketing for Alpha Software company, while maintaining a 4.0 GPA working full-time towards a Masters in Communications at Emerson College. Happy? I think. Tired? Extremely. Stopping to smell a single rose? Never. Much awaited me. I was a “mover”. My beautiful baby boy had captivated my heart, motherhood adding a new and amazing dimension to my complex and exciting life. What I did not realize then was that far too much, too many things that mattered, eluded my appreciation and understanding along the way. On I marched, projecting my future, laying out plans, acccelerating the spinning wheels in my personal “Habitrail”.
Then, cancer happened. It happened to me. It happened in the prime of my life, at just 34 years old. With a four-year-old marriage and an adorable three-year-old son, this was not supposed to happen to me. I was going forward, not staying still. Mange Venter Mig. This was not time for cancer. It was time for loving, learning, sowing, and growing. No, this was definitely not in the plan, this stopping to deal with cancer. I had no family history of cancer in my enormous, extended Italian family, nor in my extended Polish/Danish clan. I breastfed my son, I was not overweight, I did not smoke or drink. No time for this. I’m going places.
The diagnosis stunned me. It hurt my loved ones, and reflected their sorrow back to me tenfold. Relief came; the cancer was early stage. The first surgery was unsuccessful, leaving some cancer cells behind. The next surgery, weeks later, got all the cancer and left me with 1 2/3 breasts. (I shall share in a later post the humor and the challenges of having two thirds of a breast). My surgeon, God rest her beautiful soul, advised that since so much tissue had been removed I may not need radiation therapy. If cancer were to return to that breast (she noted I had about a 35% chance of recurrence over the first few years following the surgery), I would be unable to have radiation treatment to the same area later. So, the decision was made against radiation treatment. Would this have prevented my recurrence? I suppose I will never know.
Forward. Think forward. No looking back. Self-confidence returned and my crazy optimism. The faithful “Donna” engine was refueled, the determined little engine that propels me over the hills and valleys of my life.
The “cancer” chapter was over, or so we thought.
