CANCER-FREE!!!

I’m feeling such relief!! I’m starting Monday morning off on a great note. I just left the plastic surgeons office and found out that I’m cancer free!! I can also workout and shower again!! Yeahh!!

To put this into context for you, incase you have no idea what I’m talking about, in mid-September a pathologist report of a mole I had removed came back saying it ‘could’ be early-melanoma. I really didn’t phase me when I found out, I text messaged my mom, sister and best friend to tell them the news and just carried on with my day. I think they were more surprised than me. I then called a friend back and told him like it was nothing, like I had the flu or something. That night I went home and started to research melanoma and that was when I realized that this could have been a bigger deal… Apparently I’m really not that invincible.

Melanoma is the most serious and dangerous form of skin cancer. There are around 160,000 new cases of melanoma a year and around 48,000 of those people die from it. The good thing is that early-melanoma is very treatable, but if you catch it late it could very easily kill you. Thank God we caught it when we did! I read about what it could have been had I waited- wow- scary!

This whole experience has shown me that we’re not invincible. I always think that, ‘it won’t happen to me’, and I find that to be a pretty common thought of our culture. The crazy thing though is that it does happen to us, cancer could happen to anyone and we’ve all been affected by it in some way or another.

The past 6 weeks have been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster for me. Some days I’ve been scared, I’ve felt humbled, had peace… and then I’ve wondered, “is this peace or do I just think I’m invincible, should I be worried?” Two weeks ago I had a larger chunk of my skin removed and to be honest, most days I’ve felt more annoyed and inconvenienced than I’ve felt thankful for catching this as early as we did. I had to wrap myself up in a garbage bag just to shower cause I couldn’t get the stitches wet, I couldn’t workout, I could barely even bend over- Just getting in and out of my car was hard. And then I think what if they didn’t get it all?? Bigger surgery!! God, please make this it!!! I’m soooo thankful that the doctor told me this morning that this is it, I’m done! I'm free of cancer!!! I’ll be huffing and puffing at the gym again tomorrow!!

Ohh, and don’t forget, WEAR SUNSCREAN!!! :)