[v-ness]

the woman i may perhaps owe some of my life to died last night, ironically the very same day as my last chemo. pam was my sister's friend and i only met her once, but her diagnosis with triple negative breast cancer greatly affected me. she was only 47 and when she discovered it, it was in both breasts and in her lymph nodes. in september it had spread to her brain and resisted whole brain radiation. in december it entered her lungs. she was a fighter until the end, refusing in Hospice care to sign a DNR and saying she was going to get up out of bed and walk to the bathroom herself so they'd let her go home. she was, however, unable to move at all by then.

when my sister told me about pam i started doing breast self-exams, which i'd only done at best haphazardly in the past. always relied on the good ole mammogram. i began to check myself monthly. then another friend of my sister's was diagnosed with breast cancer, hers golf ball sized. although i had a clean mammogram in march of 2009 i began feeling myself up nightly, especially as my sister reported pam's failure to recover well from her mastectomy.

then in august 2009 i found a lump above my left breast and it was this cancer. i don't know if my sister ever told pam that she had inspired me so much that i really think she saved my life. i hope she did. i will tell her husband and her parents. it may bring them some small bit of comfort as they say goodbye to pam next week.

i told my sister jen this fall, when pam had brain mets, that perhaps she'd like "Love, Medicine & Miracles". jen bought it for her and she loved it. she said that every day she visualized herself planting her garden in the spring and believed that her brain mets could miraculously be beaten back into submission. but there were too many and her triple negative cancer too ferocious.

i am not sure it's completely hit me yet. i felt i had to be strong for my sister on the phone this morning when she told me the news. i may never have found that tumor at stage 1 if not for pam. now i tell every woman i know fairly well to CHECK YOURSELF and what the signs of IBC are too. we too can pay it forward and perhaps save a life. even if pam & i exchanged only a few words, her impact on my life was tremendous. it is hard to believe she left this world on the day i completed my first round of treatment. may she rest in peace and be whole and happy once again.

valerie