Visit to the Surgeon - 8/21/2008

I continued to work as a nanny for our grandchildren after I received the diagnosis of malignacy. But in the next couple of days I knew I would need to quit. I so much wanted to keep caring for the children and I did not want to tell our daughter that she needed to find another nanny. Even though I knew she knew I could not keep working.

I wanted to talk with Tawnya alone, but with her heavy schedule that was difficult to do. When she got home at night the children were so excited to see her and that would not be the time to talk to her. So as the weekend approached I prayed that someway I would be able to talk with her.
Sunday morning (8/17/08), bright and early, guess who was at our door? Tawnya was preparing for a marathon and had run the 6 1/2 miles to our house! So we sat and visited a bit and then I began to cry and told her she would have to find a new nanny. I knew I needed to quit work to get well. She knew that too.

So she began advertising and interviewing different ones for the position.
In the meantime I kept working. It was a very difficult time. I was going through lots of emotions at the time and yet I needed to be able to care adequately for the children. I was emotinally spent.

At first I just couldn't grasp the magnitude of the diagnosis. I felt good. I had no symptons. How could this be true. And then I felt so angry. I had been a vegetarian for 42 years and a (almost) vegan for around 10 years. We were vegans at home, but not necessarily if we were at someones home or eating out. There were no women in my family with breast cancer so there wasn't that genetic factor. How could this happen? I never did say, "why me?" I guess I didn't feel that anyone else deserved this diagnosis anymore than I did, but I had been kind of a "health nut" and I guess I thought that would protect me. The Loma Linda Health Study even reports that if you are vegetarian and or vegan your risk in nearly nil. But as we know statistics are only statistics. There are always the exceptions.

My appointment with the surgeon was August 21, 2008. Tawnya met Martin and me at the doctor's office.