Today we made our decisions on what to do. I’ll be having a double mastectomy with immediate reconstructive surgery. The start of this long process will begin on July 23. This is when the first surgery will be done. The doctor informed us today that he is 90% certain that I will have 6 months of chemotherapy; the part he was not sure about was if it would be once a week or once every three weeks. This news was a real slap in the face. I’ve been praying that I don’t have to have chemo, but one of the tests had a high level which indicates the cancer is aggressive. Their treatment for this is chemo.

I have to confess that I’m so upset about all of this. I really just want to crawl into a hole and wait for this to end. It feels like life is out of control and nothing good is coming. I want someone to wake me up when this is over. I’ve always heard “fight or flight”; I guess I’m definitely “flight”. I really want to get over feeling so beat up and so sorry for myself. I shouldn’t complain, I know there are so many people with things so much bigger and harder to deal with. I should be glad that it hasn’t spread, that I don’t have the breast cancer gene, that I should survive this… but I’m hung up on all the things that are coming. I really need to learn how to get over myself and deal with this, but I really don’t know how. I’m hoping that something will click and the switch will flip and I’ll be ready to fight.

— Holly Thompson