2nd generation

I can kind of understand what you are going through. I got my diagnosis on 3/4 and had a mastectomy on 3/30. My mother had breast cancer, but then after 13 years cancer free, she got another malignancy in her leg. She died 3 years ago. I thought a lot about what she went through. She did not handle Chemo well, but I am taking a positive approach. I am not my mother, I will learn from what she went through, but I will be a survivor. Be positive, look at what she went through and do what you can to make your outcome more positive.

Initially when I was diagnosed, all I could think about were my parents deaths--my mother of breast cancer and my father of prostate cancer. I felt doomed to follow the same path. But that was 20 years ago and so many medical advances have been made since then. I am also a patient at an excellent cancer center, an opportunity in medical care that my parents did not have. I was able to have genetic testing for the BRCA1&2 gene mutations and tested negative. That put my mind greatly at ease. I had to tell myself that my cancer was different than my mother's: no two cancers are alike, she was post-menopausal and I was pre-menopausal, perhaps mine had been diagnosed at an earlier stage, and I was in better physical health than she had been for many years prior to her cancer diagnosis. Concentrate on your situation without looking to your past too much, but learn from your experience in dealing with her illness. Your mother would want you to fight this with everything you have! You may find some comfort to think of your mother as your cheerleader in heaven. It worked for me. I too was given a good prognosis . . . Krista