May 2024

Today, I am going to tell you a story that I never wanted to tell. I am going to tell you about a journey I never wanted to take. It was an adventure I had always dreaded, but now that I am on the other side of it, I can tell you that I don't regret it. In fact, like any adventure, this one made me learn and grow in ways I did not expect. This journey started in March. Some of you will probably be upset with me that I did not start telling you about this adventure then. But you have to understand that I was raised listening to Paul Harvey on the radio. Each day he would tell a story and at the end, he would always say, "Now you know the rest of the story." It was ingrained inside me to never tell a story unless you could tell the ending at the same time. It took 3 months for me to get to the end of this story and that is why I am finally ready to share this adventure with you my friends.

Since this journey was not a standard hike, and I did not take any photos that you would want to see, I am instead going to share with you some of my favorite landscape and vista photos that I have taken while telling this tale. Most of these photos were taken during the last three long months while continuing to hike during this unwanted journey. If you follow Mustard Seed Hiking on social media, then you have been seeing some of what we have been doing on my hikes each week. Truly, I was on multiple adventures all at once....hiking adventures that I wanted, and then this adventure that I didn't want, but was forced to go on. So what was this adventure? Well, it was my journey with cancer.

Five days after my 50th birthday, I was sitting across from the first Doctor I visited on this journey. I had taken a quick break from my work to make this appointment, telling the shocked faces around me who knew I never leave work for anything that I had a quick errand to run. That Doctor looked me in the eyes and told me that he was sure I had cancer and that he was very concerned for my longevity. When he asked me why I had waited so long, I easily and emphatically gave a one word answer, "denial." After that somber visit, I went back to work and tried to ignore the fact that he told me I would be getting a call to immediately schedule my first surgery. He wanted it done within 2 to 3 days. Of course that turned into almost 2 weeks before they could get me to a specialist and then only if I drove 3 hours round trip to a hospital up north to get this done. That was a long drive deep in my thoughts, I can tell you that.

By the time I was checked in, sitting in a small room on a paper covered table and wearing a plain open backed gown (I kept my base layer on), I was feeling rather anxious. The Specialist came in and took one look at the lesion on my upper arm and told me he was sure it was cancer. Melanoma to be exact. He said it was bad. At this point, despite my best efforts, the blood started to pound in my head and the ground felt like it was slowly being pulled out from under me. He told me that he was going to remove the lesion. I swallowed hard. "Look Doc," I said "I don't care about scarring, just please get good margins so this is a one and done event." The plan was to do this surgery under local anesthetics only. He gravely shook his head at me and truly looked sorry to tell me the next news. "This will not be one and done I can tell you that for sure." I tried to focus on what he told me next. Essentially as a Board Certified Dermatologist who sees lots of skin cancer, he knew mine was advanced and what he was going to do that day was just remove the lesion for biopsy. Then I would be coming back for a much more advanced surgery to remove a significant amount of skin around the lesion and potentially the closest lymph-nodes depending on the biopsy results. This lesion was on my upper left arm, so that meant the lymph-nodes in my left armpit. I tried not to gasp at the idea of multiple surgeries and lymph-node involvement. Things were getting real serious, real fast. Whenever I think of cancer in lymph-nodes I think death.

As the physician injected Lidocaine around the lesion on my arm, I peppered him with questions about Melanoma and every thing he told me had me sinking deeper into the hole that was opening up in the ground beneath me. Apparently Melanoma is a real beast. It doesn't even respond to Chemo or Radiation. Surgical removal were my best chances. He started telling me of all the celebrities that have died from it. As he used electrocautery to burn the edges of the skin remaining around the removed lesion, I assured him that I have never, not even once in my life, been in a tanning bed. But I admitted to a lot of hiking and high elevation hiking with full sun exposure. I have never been great about sunblock when I hike as I tend to sweat it (or swim it) off and I don't like to pack the weight to reapply. That was all about to change....along with stupid looking sun hats which I am now the proud owner of four of!

As I drove away from the hospital with bandages covering my upper left arm, I felt a little like I had poison running through my veins. It was going to be a week of waiting to get the biopsy results and find out my fate. During that time, I had a lot to think about. But the biggest decision I made right away was that I did not want to tell anyone....not my friends, not my family, not my Church family, not my husband....this was going to be just another adventure for Jesus and I alone. We do best alone, Him and I.

I knew only too well the initial reaction of people when you tell them you have cancer. I have seen it time and again in others, and felt it in myself. When people learn you have cancer, they start to distance themselves from you, start to imagine their lives without you, start to see you as dead already. Or they become overbearing and suffocate you, or it all becomes about them and their emotions. I wanted none of it. For better or worse, I am use to being in control. I like to be in control. This was the first thing God was going to work on inside me with this journey into cancer I can tell you that. There was nothing that I could control....except for who knew about my cancer and whether I wore pants. So I controlled my secret with great dominion.

If I am honest, there were moments when I wished I could tell someone just to get it off my chest. There were moments when the secret itself felt like it was suffocating me. But if I told my friends, it would likely get out. If I told anyone at Church, then my husband would find out. At my work I am sort of the Captain of the ship. That means I have to have all the answers and be the strong one. It is expected that captains will remain in control in the most pressurized of situations. I could not show a chink in my armor. I would be strong. I had to be strong. I would only show my weakness to Jesus. I started to see this as just another test, another challenge. If you know me at all, you know that I thrive on challenges. Once I threw that gauntlet of silence down, it became easy and I thrived on it. Thrived on the little secret that was consuming my life.

Also, if I am being honest, this felt like a way for me to honor God. I know that the bible tells me that where two or more are gathered, there God will be too. But I also know that God hears my prayers alone. He is willing to answer just my prayers. By asking others to pray for me it almost feels like I don't believe God will do it just for me. It almost feels as if I don't have faith in Him or respect Him enough. By bringing this down to just Him and I, I could prove that He was enough for me and I was enough for Him. It strangely gave me great power in this situation and through power I feel peace and comfort. I knew we could do it, God and I.

Luckily, pretty quickly God worked in my heart to see cancer as an opportunity. It was an opportunity to take a new sort of adventure with God....it was true that this adventure made my heart race faster just like when crossing a skinny log high above a raging river. This adventure made me sweat and breath hard walking into each hospital just as if I was climbing the steepest of mountains. This adventure eclipsed my ability to think about many other issues or concerns in my life just like when I am lost on the trail on a night hike. But I would joke with God over and over, "You know Father, the views on this journey are not my favorite. The smells on this adventure are not like the wildflowers, ferns and evergreens." We would laugh about this over and over. I tried to embrace the adrenaline rushes from the process of cancer appointments and surgeries in the same way I love adrenaline on the trail. It was just a little different, as I would need to remind myself again and again.

God and I had already grown close during all our weekly hiking adventures over the last five years, but this new closeness was going to become much more extreme over the 3 months while I battled cancer. This was especially the case when the biopsy results came in. The news was that I did have Melanoma and it was the worst case scenario that the Specialist had given me. I would need the more aggressive surgery on my arm and lymph-nodes removed. I scheduled my consult with the surgeon with a sinking heart. I tried hard not to question God. I remembered Matthew 5:45, "He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." Bad things happen to all of us. It is a fact of life. I needed to trust this process and know that God would use it for good within me. I trust His plans for me. I may not like them or agree with His timing, but I chose to trust Him now and always.

My surgeon was a very tall and patient man. During the consult, I think he realized that I was a special kind of crazy. I am not sure if it was my insisting on this aggressive surgery being under local anesthetics only so that I could be fully awake or if it was when I conceded that if I did go under full anesthesia I would 100% be keeping my pants on. We ran the gauntlet of topics during that 30 minute consult. Just like at my last two appointments, both the surgeon and the nurses were shocked that I had come alone. They could not fathom handling this news alone and it seemed to make them very sad. In fact the surgeon pushed me several times that there surely must be someone I could call or tell. He made it very clear that if I was going under full anesthesia I would need someone to drive me. That opened up a whole new can of worms. "No way!" I said. "I am not telling anyone about cancer. I wouldn't make my worst enemy go through this journey! I have to do it alone. Just let me sleep off the anesthesia a bit and I will be fine to drive." He put his foot down. We went round and round. Cancer no longer seemed to be the issue, it was how I could logistically do everything needed while still keeping my secret. I told you, I clearly have control issues and this was my challenge.

When the surgeon described the procedure itself, the ground started to open up and wanted to swallow me again. He showed me how much skin he would be taking off from around the first healing surgical site. But then he told me not to worry, because he would be moving skin from elsewhere to cover that area. I truly think I blacked out in that moment as I don't recall anything else he said about moving skin. By the time I heard him again, he was on to discussing injecting dye into the incision site and then removing any lymph-nodes that were highlighted by it. He estimated anywhere from one to four lymph-nodes would be removed. I pushed on the issue of only using local anesthetics once more. I figured this way I could stay awake, I could be in control, I wouldn't need a driver, and I would feel much better about the entire thing. I told him he could cut anything out of me that he wanted to providing it was under a local only. The ever patient surgeon told me I needed to do yoga and take some deep breaths or something. I think I was wearing him down. He finally agreed that he would do the more aggressive arm surgery with just a local, but said no way on the lymph-nodes as they were too deep. I left in despair and had to drive another hour and a half home from the consult deep inside myself.

God and I talked a lot. I wanted His will and not my own, but I begged Him to not make me go under full anesthesia. You see my own Father, who I am very similar to, had many surgeries in the years before his death. With each knee replacement, then hip and prostrate surgeries, he had mini strokes under anesthesia. He woke up each time a little more like a vegetable and was never the same. The strokes eventually took his life. My own Mother had a surgery and she clearly woke up with fewer brain cells than she started with. Several years ago I had a friend who went in for a procedure and truly came out a vegetable, never to walk or barely talk again before her untimely death. I just could not be put under the big guns. So I stalled in scheduling the surgery. I wondered if I just never did anything if they would track me down. I had already removed my phone number from Kaiser's patient portal so they would stop leaving messages on my answering machine for fear my husband would hear one. I was facing a new mountain, mostly of my own making.

Now I knew what I was facing. I had all the answers and there were no further tests to wait on. It was all on me. The weight was as heavy as my heaviest backpacking kit on my back. I started to research and became my own worst enemy on Dr. Google. I know, you should never do that!! It was truly not a good idea. I read that once diagnosed with Melanoma I would have a 27% chance of living beyond five years. Those became my darkest days. Five years to live?? This fact reverberated all the way down to the very cells within my bones. It was like being on a sinking ship. Cancer was lurking beneath the surface of the waters and was waiting to sneak up on me with her sharp jaws. She was going to drag me to the bottom of the ocean. All my plans for my future were gone. Everything I cared about on this planet would be stripped away from me. I was coming to a new place inside myself. I may not be able to hike much longer. The goals I had were out the window. Nothing mattered. I had to embrace death. As the John Denver song goes, all my bags were packed and I was ready to go.

In fact the veil between life and death, between heaven and earth, became incredibly thin during this time. I could glimpse through and even feel the other side. That was now home and I would be there much sooner than I ever expected. In my darkest nights, God whispered to me through all my sleepless hours. It took me two days to feel ready to die. The only thing that bothered me was the idea of leaving my precious Nova Leigh Mae behind. She would think I had abandoned her. I couldn't do that. Have you ever wanted something so badly it hurt? This hurt me. Leaving Nova would kill me more than the cancer could. I begged God to just let me live longer than Nova. He could take me on the very day she died. I planned on what to do with all my other animals and even my plants, as I surely knew my husband would let them all die. I thought about things that use to matter to me and realized that they no longer did. Everything and I mean everything was changing inside me during these long weeks. I planned to stay as strong as possible right up until the end. I would continue to hike, continue to work and not let anyone know. I would write a letter to my husband that he could read when I died. Like everything in life, I even planned my own death out.

I was reminded of something that CS Lewis once said. "The enemy will not see you vanish into God's company without an effort to reclaim you." I knew that what I was feeling was not just a battle with cancer, but a spiritual battle. Emptiness became a constant companion. I found grief to be a tricky hunter, coming at me when I least expected it. She was ready to pounce on me. It could come in a moment when someone innocently asked me how I was doing, not knowing anything of course. Inside me my answer screamed out "I am dying of cancer, how are you?", but on the outside I merely answered "Fine, how are you?" as expected in normal society. For the first time in my life I could understand what depression was. I had to learn to breathe all over again. So I hiked. I talked to God. Our closeness became my greatest solace and joy. I may not win the battle with cancer, but I would win the war against Spiritual warfare! I could feel God with me everywhere I went. He would not let go of me. Jesus's love was like a shadow that rested on me at all times. He started to fill me with the greatest peace the more I turned around into His embrace. It was unreal and I would not have survived these days and weeks without my God and Savior. At one point, I told Him that I didn't even have a mustard seed size faith left inside me anymore and that He was going to have to do this for me. He agreed and I gave up total control to my Father in Heaven. In that moment I knew I would walk right up to Heaven if that was what He wanted me to do.

God did not give me a giant billboard sign along the road. Nor did he send an airplane with a banner behind it. But he did fill me with the strongest feeling that I needed to contact both the Dermatologist and the Surgeon again with one more question. He told me to ask what the percentage risk was for the cancer being in my Lymph-nodes. I did as I was told, not expecting anything good to come from it. The Dermatologist told me he ran all my information through some cancer calculator (too cool!) and that it came back as a 6% chance. I was shocked. I was seriously considering going under full anesthesia and becoming a vegetable until my death inside of five years for a 6% chance??? No way!! I asked the Surgeon. He did not use a calculator, but told me from his experience, he would guess my risk was 10-15%. This was like a light in a tornado! Now I was feeling more in control again. It was as if God was giving me the tools I needed. I felt my anesthetic risk for significant complications was far greater than 15%. I emailed the Surgeon back and told him I was declining going after the lymph-nodes. Was it reckless? Maybe, but I felt great peace with the plan. I briefly contemplated not doing either surgery, but felt God telling me that there was no risk with the local anesthetic and I might as well do that. Part of me knew I needed to do the second surgery just to fix my arm. You see, since the first surgeon was so sure I would need further surgeries, he had not sutured me closed, but left an open and gaping wound on my arm just waiting for the next procedure. It had taken weeks of painful granulating in of skin to become a truly ugly bright pink and wrinkled scar. This would be real hard to hide. So part of me knew I should do the next surgery just to fix that bit of ugliness. It just felt wrong though, as my body had worked so hard and been so uncomfortable for weeks to heal. I felt guilty cutting out skin that had tried so diligently to live again. Would there be phantom pain I wondered? Despite these reservations, I went ahead and scheduled the next surgery. I fought the feelings of doom inside myself as I waited, keeping my hope in Jesus.

When the day for the aggressive surgery arrived, I drove myself to the hospital once again with a sense of great peace hanging off me. I was draped in a calmness that did not make any sense. It was rather surreal, but I enjoyed it for as long as I could. I knew a time would come during this surgery where skin would be cut out and other skin moved, where my resolve for peace would be tested. That moment came when the nurse walked me not into an exam room, but into a true surgery suite. My mouth instantly went dry like I had swallowed cotton....the sign of true fear in me. Another nurse arrived and then my friend the tall and patient Surgeon came into the room. I realized what a wise man he was when he allowed me to remain fully clothed. I joked with him that I had worn a red tank top just so he wouldn't need to worry about staining my clothes with blood. But the true comic moment for the day came when he asked me to come over and lie down on the surgery table. I kicked off my shoes, as that only seemed polite, and stepped up next to the table. But then I couldn't move. I looked to each of the serious capped and masked faces staring at me expectantly. It was as if I could no longer speak English and was frozen in time. I could sense they were asking me to lie down, but it felt like willingly stepping into an electric chair. I think my tall Surgeon might have had to pull and push me into position, but I don't rightly recall. I do remember him draping me with multiple layers of sterile drapes and the nurse putting the contact pad beneath my side for the electrocautery unit. (See it was like an electric chair I thought!).

The multiple Lidocaine injections hurt, I am not going to lie. They hurt a lot more than the first surgery. But I knew he had a much larger area to numb and I was not going to make a peep as this is what I had begged him for. Perhaps he was enjoying stabbing me to teach me a lesson, but I was not about to react in any way. Instead we started to chat. We talked about cancer, melanoma, hiking, wolves and photography. I asked him if I was now a ticking time bomb for melanoma and he surprised me by saying that this was not necessarily true. But what shocked me most of all was when I asked him if he really thought I only had a 27% chance of surviving beyond 5 years. He stopped and looked at me and said, no he felt that it depended on my biopsy results of the skin he was removing now of course, but he felt I had a 97% chance of living beyond 5 years!! Surely fireworks went off in my head at that moment. I was just given a license to live again!!! Up from the very ashes, I could feel my hope arise. But the surgeon also reminded me that we didn't know about my Lymph-nodes. I agreed to a non-invasive ultrasound to take a look at them and see if there was anything concerning.

The most concerning thing in that moment though became when he was starting to move skin. There was tugging and pressure and pulling and it was a bit much. I can now understand why full anesthesia was recommended. Most humans should surely opt for full anesthesia. But I am stronger than the storm I reminded myself and forced my focus to be on trying to enjoy feeling something that you normally never get to feel in your life. By the time he finished his first pack of 3/0 suture and was moving on to his second pack of 4/0 suture, I was enjoying the feeling and found it sad when the tugging and pulling stopped. It had strangely become comforting. I could have laid there all day feeling that. There was no pain....that was to come later. After about an hour of surgery, I was able to sit up and receive my walking orders. I was to strictly enforce light duty. I made the mistake of saying that I would be hiking the very next day. Both nurses and the Doctor looked at me like I was insane again. The head nurse seemed very concerned about my taking on and off and carrying a backpack. "It will be fine" I told her. When she told me I had to keep the incision dry, I assured her I had good rain gear, but was likely to sweat a lot. I was not making friends with that nurse I can tell you that. She piled up extra bandages for me to take with me to cover the steri-strips and incision beneath. When I asked her when I could lift weights again, she said not for a minimum of 7 days. UGH. We were definitely not friends.

I had scheduled this more aggressive surgery, just like my first, to be on the one day each week I work from home. I would make up the hours around that day each week, determined not to let cancer rob me of my PTO hours for backpacking. As I arrived home after the second surgery, I took a few moments to make a cup of hot cocoa and wrap myself in a blanket before sitting down to work. The Lidocaine did not wear off for about 12 hours. But when it did, boy did I feel that incision! The pain was deep, immense and raw. But I refuse to take even an Ibuprofen in my life. I am apparently a secret member of the pain and suffering club. The only way I got through the night was by falling asleep with an ice pack covering my incision. (I know, the nurse said to ice no more than 30 minutes at a time, but I am clearly not a very good patient). When I woke up the next morning with a soggy and warm ice pack, the pain was still so bad that I was incredibly nauseous. I regretted not taking something oral for the pain. But it was too late now as there was no way I could eat anything without throwing up. Just walking to the bathroom about dropped me to my knees. This was suppose to be my hiking day and I had a plan to celebrate that I would live. I called it my Proof of Life hike and I had to do it! The goal was to do not one hike, but two brand new hikes both on the same day with lots of elevation and flowers! But I had to go lay down in bed for another 45 minutes to work up the courage to get in the shower and start packing my gear.

Eventually I did get all packed up and found myself at the first trailhead of the day. I was dreading swinging my pack up onto my back after the lectures from the nurse. I strapped some gear around my waist, put on my boots, tied the wolf to me and then pulled the pack slowly in place. "That was far better than taking my sports bra on and off!" I exclaimed out loud when done. I should tell the nurse I thought. The first hike was amazing. The second one was the best I have ever had. I truly felt that I lived an entire lifetime on that day. I was ready to die even though the Surgeon just assured me I would live beyond five years. I have rarely seen such beauty as God gave me this day. In fact as the sun started to set and I was still on the ridgetop trail surrounded by wild flowers in every color, I decided we needed to trail run....with my full pack on. I was feeling at the top of my game and like nothing could stop me now!! That was until I got down to my truck and started to take off my pack and coat. I gingerly felt my arm and discovered that someone had shoved 2 golf balls under the bandage over my incision. Okay, they weren't really balls....my incision had just swollen like hell. I laughed ironically as I pulled off my boots. "I know a Doctor and nurse who would be REAL mad at me right now!" I said to Josie. The pain was certainly there, but far better than that morning. I really felt pretty great, despite the extreme swelling, proving once again that hiking was my best medicine. I might have disfigured my incision and caused worse scarring, but I had no regrets on this the best hiking day ever! Although, that night I did have to fall asleep with ice on my incision again. The swelling had the incision ballooning up over and above even the steri-strips and water proof bandaging. Ice was becoming my new best friend!

That next week waiting for the biopsy results of the second surgery didn't bother me at all. I waiting as patiently and calmly as I would dinner to finish in the oven. It was nothing to me anymore. Once I had truly felt God's will over my life and put my body and soul fully into His hands, what did I have to fear? God had sparked a fire in my very blood during these weeks of closeness. I trusted Him now even more than before and that is saying something!

During this time in my journey I also ran across a saying that meant a lot to me. I don't know who wrote it to give them credit, but they stated that "Sometimes God calms the storm and sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms His child." I frequently reminded myself of this during that week where once again I was not in control waiting to hear my fate. I was learning to truly sing my praises in the middle of the storm. Thank God though, my second biopsy came back with absolutely no signs of cancer in the skin removed.

Less than one week after the second surgery, I was driving to another hike. On the way, I was playing a game with percentages. Okay....15% chance cancer is in my lymph-nodes, but probably 25% chance of being killed by a cougar or bear. Thirty percent chance of falling off a cliff. It was a fun game. But it was no longer fun when we had been on the trail a short while and almost died. You see the Wolf and I almost stepped on a very angry and startled rattlesnake. His fangs were inches from my right leg when I shoved the Wolf to safety. Here I was recovering from surgery and clearly didn't take the 50% chance of dying from rattlesnake venom into account. My surgeon is going to be so mad at me if I die like this I thought. But we stopped to take pictures with the snake before seeing just how angry we could make him before safely moving him off the trail. Did you know that a Western Diamondback has a green underbelly?? Yeah, neither did I. He was wicked cool.

After another week, it was time for my lymph-node ultrasound appointment. I was very relaxed and all seemed to go well. That is until the ultrasound Tech started to take dozens of photos and measurements. She also went from being a very open and sweet woman to suddenly not making eye contact with me when it was done. She barely spoke and I had the terrible sinking feeling that I was dying all over again. I must admit that waiting for those results was intense. It was almost worse than the first biopsy because this would mean a third surgery and under full anesthesia. My well found peace started to dissipate as I fought hard to hold onto it. Oh how fickle I am! Life is unpredictable and we are never really ready for the curve-balls. But the ups and downs and ups and downs of these three months was giving me grey hair like you wouldn't believe! I had to get myself back to the place where it was okay to die. I suddenly realized that I truly did understand the verse from Philippians 1:21 better than I ever had before. "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." That verse had a whole new meaning for me and it was personal. I went back to being ready to die.

I had gone on a Find and Seek game with God. I found cancer, but God was seeking me. He was seeking me and teaching me at the same time. He taught me about patience and control. He taught me about what it means to truly find peace and that it can be found in the most extreme of circumstances. It is all in our mindset. He taught me that I am even stronger than I thought I was. He taught me that lifting weights after only 3 days instead of 7 was a bad idea. He taught me that I don't have to worry about cancer, if it is my time, it will be my time and God knows I would rather die from a sexy rattlesnake bite than melanoma. God showed me he wouldn't stop running after me. A hush has come over my soul and my perspectives have changed. I don't want to go back. I especially don't want to lose the closeness I have felt with God. When I look back, I am so happy that I never told anyone about this journey while I was in it. There is not a human on this planet who could have gone with me to these appointments and made me feel anywhere near as supported, cared about and loved as Jesus did while He came with me. If I could feel that every day of my life (without the cancer), I would be the most blessed of humans ever.

I have a new challenge going forward. Somehow, I have to hide my scar from my husband. He still does not have a clue about any of this. I am lucky that he is not the most observant man. (Especially when yet again another pair of hiking boots is delivered to our front door). I am lucky he does not know this website's address. (Neither does anyone in my family for that matter). During these months my husband has been oblivious to my stress, the pain etched in my face, all the bandages in the bathroom garbage, and the number of times I have gasped and grabbed my arm when bumping it cooking his meals. To be fair, he has seen me still hiking, working, building bonfires, mowing, gardening, you name it. So you can't really blame him for not noticing. I took no down time! I realistically know I can't wear long sleeves forever though. But this will be my new game...wish me luck! For the few of you reading this who also know my husband, silence in this matter is vital for the game to be fair. He has to see it on his own to count. Please don't spoil my fun!

Now, what about my lymph-node ultrasound? After a very long week, it came back completely normal with nothing to worry about. (I am still waving my fist at that ultrasound technician!!) So I am technically cancer free as much as we can know and the Docs only want me to go back in every 6 months for 3 years for skin checks and lymph-node ultrasounds, and then annually after that. So I guess I am going to live to see another day. I guess I don't need to drop everything and go hike the PCT right away. My cancer journey is over and it was intense. Technically the National Cancer Institute defines anyone who has gone through a diagnosis of cancer to the end of their life as a cancer survivor. Guess that means me. I don't know what to do with that information. Is cancer survivor something I should put after my name on my business card along with my college degree? I don't have that answer. But what I do know, is that I do not regret going though my cancer journey in any way. The big "C" that I had always dreaded was a blessing in disguise. Through that adventure, and I think only through that particular adventure, was I able to learn and grow and gain in such a way as to surely be worth the pain and suffering. All I can say is thank you Jesus and now, my friends, you know the rest of the story.

Because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from Heaven, to shine on those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet onto the path of peace.

Luke 1:78-79