Beating the Odds

“I’m going in to put humpty & dumpty together again...” Linda

I can still remember that fateful day two years ago when my friend Linda called. We had just returned from a road trip of training across the province. We would stop at all the quaint garden centres along eastern Ontario’s rural back roads and pick up unusual plants and garden ornaments for our gardens and cottages. She would find the weirdest stores and we bought the weirdest things to take home to our families. She is the world’s best shopper and I never laugh as hard as I do when I am with her. Therefore, when I heard her voice I was thrilled and I started reminiscing about some of our private jokes. She did not laugh this time.

“I have breast cancer,” she said unexpectedly. I remember just sitting there and not saying a word. I was so confused. It was not possible. Linda is vitality and that is all there is to it. She is one of those rare nurses who actually takes her health seriously and is committed to a healthy lifestyle. This was wrong. I was mad.

A few weeks later Linda had her radical right mastectomy and proceeded through hell for a year of chemotherapy and radiation. Even through that year, she never lost herself or her sense of humour. She had to travel from her home 2 hours away to the Cancer Centre in my hometown for treatment. I would drop in during her treatments to check up on her. I was the one who always left cheered and inspired by her determination to kick cancer in the bloody face.

On some occasions, I would meet her and her husband the night before for dinner. She would model her wigs for me. The blond wig was her; the red was “Rediculous”. Nevertheless, she wanted to have fun with it and the red one was fun for her. As we waited to be seated one evening, in front of a long line up she loudly said, “Feel my booby”. Laughing I squeezed her right boob, “very taut” I replied. We both broke into hysterical laughter at the looks on the patrons faces. If only they had known that, I was squeezing her new mastectomy bra.

Last September to commemorate her first year of being cancer free, Linda walked in the 60 KM walk to End Breast Cancer in Toronto. She had trained all summer and finished the weekend walk through rain and sleet. She raised $10k for breast cancer research and proved once again why some people become heroes.

This morning Linda is going in for a 9-hour surgery. Not for cancer, but because of cancer. She is having a prophylactic mastectomy of her left breast. She wants to beat the odds of metastasis. At the same time, the microvascular surgeons are going to take some of her abdominal rectus muscle and reconstruct her right chest wall. They will then lypo her abdominal fat and reconstruct both breasts. With all her crazy humour she tells me, that she will finally have the “B cups” that she has always wanted. The D cups will be history.

As I look over the St. Lawrence River from my hotel window in old Quebec this morning, I am sending Linda all my positive thoughts and prayers while they put humpty & dumpty together again.

You go girl!