Sometime in June 2013

I have always heard the sayings like "you should listen to that little voice in your ear", "a woman's intuition is always right", and "go with your gut feeling".

You are free to call it whatever you like - a little voice, intuition, gut feeling - I now call it God. I knew something was not right with my body. I have too often listened to that devil on my shoulder rather than God. In fact, I live with the daily question, guilt and doubt that maybe if I would have listened to God more and the devil less, I may not have gotten cancer in the first place. Maybe cancer is my punishment for all the times I ignored God (but that's another story for another day).

But lets just say, I knew something was wrong with my body. I had been having pain in my right breast for several weeks. Not a terrible pain, but a pain that made me realize something was just not right. I kept putting it to the back of my mind and ignoring it. Plus, I kept telling myself that I did not have time to make a doctor's appointment and it would probably just be a waste of my time and my doctor's time if I did make an appointment. So I ignored it.

God works in mysterious ways. One day in June my best friend Julie called to tell me about a mutual friend who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 33. All the while, during the phone call, my breast ached. What seemed like just a regular call to my best friend Julie, was actually a wake up call to me. As soon as Julie and I hung up, I called my breast specialist's office and made an appointment - the first available was early July which was fine with me, because I was sure it was nothing.

So you may be wondering why I had a breast specialist even before I was diagnosed with cancer. Well with my mom's breast cancer history and my history of having to have benign lumps removed, I had been lucky enough to get referred to Dr. Christian years beforehand. Dr. Christian has been seeing me on about a yearly basis since college. If you live in Louisiana - she is an amazing doctor and I would highly recommend her!

So the appointment was made and I really did not think much about it after that. I was convinced that if it was anything, it was just another benign tumor. Life goes on.

And then July comes...