You can. You really can. You can do anything for 5 Minutes.
Spoiler alert, this is my last Breast Cancer Awareness Month Post for 2018. But it is also about perseverance and survival. Of anything. Once you become aware of the power of your mind.
Growing up, my dad wrote about people.
Of course, in order for a story to be a story something needs to challenge that person. So he wrote about heroes. A hero—a person who does what needs to be done usually against the odds and mostly by allowing fear and doing it anyway.
It is the “it” that gets you.
I often wondered what type of frontier woman I would make. My friend Anne told me, “You cry at a paper cut and laugh at a broken leg.” I guess that is true. I handle the big stuff well. I just get down to business. If otherwise enclined I might have made a good ER doctor.
When I was going through 2009-2012 I had so many tests, blood tests, scans, procedures, operations, medications it was hard to keep track. At first it was to prove I had cancer, then it was to see if it had gone further than we thought and lastly to treat and repair from cancer. I seemed to be in doctor’s offices, hospitals and waiting rooms every day.
Most of the time I was alone.
Our kids were little so my husband was transporting them and for a lot of it I was able to drive myself and if I wasn’t and he couldn’t my mom did. I was never alone before a surgery or chemo but the rest of the time I was. So I sat in those waiting rooms and did those scans and blood tests by myself.
The only thing that kept me sane was my mind.
If I could keep my mind on track and safely tucked into the positive, or dreaming of skiing or snorkeling, I was ok.
It wasn’t easy.
I knew, though, that I could do anything for 5 minutes. Anything. I could stay still for a scan, drink something disgusting and harsh for a test, have my blood drawn one more time and make it from my husband to the operating room alone. I could do all of it as long as I kept my mind straight and remembered I only had to be where I was. Where my feet were was all that was happening and I could endure tremendous pain for 5 minutes.
What was lousy was when I had to do it for another 5 and another 5.
But I got through it. And so can you.
You know the drill…see your doctor, get your mammogram, do your breast self exam and if you feel something say something.
Unfortunately no one is too young for breast cancer.
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