My Detour

For those of you who are already accompanying me along this ride, thanks. Your support, encouragement and kinds words mean everything. Your prayers are my comfort and solace. I won't be giving you a minute by minute account, just the highs and I suppose the lows as well. To my family, Team Savta, you are my everything. To my Jeff, you are my rock.

Who ever thought that my routine mammogram last March would start me down this unfamiliar road. I never missed my yearly mammogram or physical. I have been blessed with good health and rarely even get colds. My biggest complaint is occasional flare ups of back pain but rest and a few Advil takes care of it.

When I got a call back for a follow up mammogram in March, the radiologist concluded that what I most likely had was a cyst but to come back in four months, not wait a year. I marked the date to make the follow up appointment. Whew...I let my breath out and didn't think too much about it.

In the mean time, I started with a new ob/gyn. My long time doctor no longer took my Blue Cross insurance  due to Sutter Health doctors not accepting Covered California and I started with a new doctor. My Anthem insurance saga is a very long story for another day. When she examined me, she suggested I move up the appointment. I made it a few weeks earlier.

This time the radiologist was acting in a way that I knew things were not good. I outright asked him if he thought I had cancer and he said it was possible. He told me I needed to get a biopsy. This was right before the fourth of July and Jeff and I were headed to Calistoga. We love to go to Calistoga around the fourth but this time our usual idyllic vacation was marred by me being on the phone trying to get an appointment for a biopsy.

 Though I was told initially I would have to wait several days, I found someone at the Carol Ann Reed Breast Center who heard the urgency in my voice that I needed to get this done immediately. And there was particular urgency as my daughter Laurie was expecting her first child, our fifth grandchild, very soon.

I managed to schedule the biopsy on the following Monday. I drove myself.  It was a simple procedure and they told me the results would be sent to my doctor  within several days.Despite hearing anecdotes from friends about their biopsies which turned out OK, somehow I knew I wasn't going to escape this bullet.

 I already got the call the next day from the ob/gyn. When she told me I had cancer, I was shocked but not surprised. I had to break the news to Jeff and my family. The ob gyn told me that what I had was small, caught early and I just had to hold my nose and take care of it.

I never once said why me?  It is more like why not me? So this is my challenge, and I hope I can keep this blog going while I head down this bumpy road that is definitely a detour in my life. Blogging is new for me, but since I have become a writer, it will be another avenue for me to explore. Hope you will be on my team.