The best weekend ever!

This past Saturday was May 8th, my 50th birthday! I decided that to celebrate and honor my mom I would walk in Salt Lake City's "Race for a Cure". It was one of the neatest experiences I have had the privilege of participating in in a very long time. Thank you to Emalee for covering the store for me so that I could do this with many loved family members. Our "group" was walking in remembrance of Lona Topham, Kerstin's daughters mother who passed away from breast cancer, but I wanted to walk in honor of my mom as well.

Thank you Kerstin for planting the idea and giving me the motivation to act!

I was lucky, my "big" sister came from Idaho to help celebrate my surprise birthday party (more on that later), and because she came, she and I were able walk together in honor of mom. She reminded me of my mom's own battle with breast cancer, a story that I had forgotten about. My mom was incredible! A woman that I took for granted and didn't learn to appreciate until after her passing. She was amazing! She was a strong woman! You see my mom was in her early 30's when she went in for a gall bladder operation. After mom had been "knocked out" and during the preparations for her surgery the "nurse" found a lump on mom's breast, they determined that it was serious enough that something needed to be done immediately, and my dad was asked to sign papers giving permission for the doctors to "investigate" the lump and do whatever would be necessary. To keep the story short, mom went in for gall bladder surgery and came out without a breast. She had been given mastectomy. It was hard for her to accept and deal with. Can you imagine?

Mom recovered from her breast cancer; but she suffered with cancer for most of her life. She had ovarian cancer, breast cancer and eventually died from lung cancer. During one of her lung cancer surgeries, the doctors found dead tumors adhered to her chest cavity that had died many years earlier because of the cobalt treatments she had to have to kill the cancer. Had my dad not signed those papers, I would have lost my mom much sooner than 1985. He helped prolong her life and we were blessed to have her for many more years.

(I started this post a long time ago. Thought that I finally ought to post it.... I guess the story of the birthday will just have to wait.)