My mother is the bravest and strongest woman I know. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2002, and that summer was a nightmare for her: First the surgery that took half of her breast, 8 chemo treatments that nearly killed her, the loss of all of her hair and a great bit of her body weight. Her body was weak and she was terrified that she was going to die. Once her chemo treatments were done, she moved on the the grueling radiation schedule. One treatment every day for 33 days, and the resulting exhaustion that comes with radiation. That fall, lingering urinary tract pain lead to a new round of doctors who concluded that the chemotherapy had done permanent and lasting damage to her bladder. The resulting pain led to a horrible addiction to pain killers and an estrangement from her 3 daughters.

She decided she could not live that way anymore and moved 800 miles away to the town where she was raised. She lived there for a year and kicked her pain killer addiction. After a year, she moved back to where we are. The day she got to town, she sat in my living room and told me that she had been diagnosed with another round of breast cancer, in the opposite breast. Four years from the date she was originally diagnosed. That was her deciding factor to move back: Access to good doctors.

Again, the surgery. This time, though, she had no health insurance and informed her oncologist that she would absolutely not take chemotherapy. Another round of radiation followed.

Angels are always at work. The hospital where her surgery occurred wrote off her surgery. The radiation center did the same. She went through this second round of cancer to find that it was likely caused by a cancer drug. Tamoxifin, the estrogen blocker that was supposed to keep the cancer at bay. A doctor mentioned off hand one day that they were seeing a large surge in former breast cancer patients returning with new tumors from this drug. So the thing that was supposed to "cure" her caused her cancer.

I say all of this to say that today, my mom is wonderful and healthy and has mammograms every 6 months to ensure a third occurrance.

Having gone through everything she has been through and she's still here to talk about it.

She is my hero.