Hi..I am a 36 yr old, 3 yr breast cancer survivor as of today, 10/24/06.  It was a tough road from diagnosis through chemotherapy.  My tumor was ER/PR negative, which means I can not take the hormone therapy drugs like Tamoxifen.  It also means that my cancer is more aggressive, or maybe just less treatable, and it required me to undergo chemo.  Tumor was small, no lymph nodes involved.  I lost my hair. I was sick, and extremely fatigued.  Three years later, it's a distant memory most of the time.  Yearly checkups are worrisome, but have proven me cancer free so far.  I work in the office I was treated in, I am a medical assistant.  I thought about leaving this job many times, but I feel that my purpose there is to help new breast cancer patients, and help them to see that life is not over, it will get better. They will one day look back like I do, remembering thinking "why hasn't the world stopped turning?, how am I going to get through this brick wall?, life is over" and realizing that life is back to normal, and there is life after breast cancer, or any kind of cancer.  Not only is there life, but "Life is good!" 

Edited by Princess70 - 24 Oct 2006 at 12:04pm

Congrats Princess. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in Oct of 1997. Just 4 months before I was getting married. Luckily hers had not spread and she was able to take radiation and then for five years, Tamoxifen. She was very lucky. The part that makes it really scary for her is that when she was about 23 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She had been married just a few years to my dad and didn't have any kids. She had to take chemo and everything. Lost her hair, couldn't eat. She was told that she would never have children. I am happy to say she has 3 daughters. I will be 28 next month, next is my sis who is 25, then the youngest who is 23. My mom felt amazing guilt when in 2005 I had to have a hysterectomy due to precancerous lesions on my cervix. I have one son who is 8 and who is my world. My mom felt like she passed down the genes for cancer. I am only so thankful that I had her to be so much like. Knowing what she has gone through has made me that much stronger. She continued fighting to have us. I will never stop fighting to make her proud.