"Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that had made all the difference." Robert Frost
An Introduction
By Marilyn Holasek Lloyd
Editor, Breast Cancer Study and Support Blogger, Breast Cancer Journeys Published Author: Story in Bernie Siegel’s Book: A Book of Miracles The Afterword in The Whole-Food Guide for Breast Cancer Survivors: A Nutritional Approach to Preventing Recurrence by Edward Bauman, MED, PHD and Helayne Waldman, MS, EDD. Bless The Beasts: Pet Parables
To understand my medical situation and what happened to me, I would highly encourage the reader to read the following older pieces of writing. Those earlier articles definitively explain where I am coming from and the true story as everything unfolded for twenty years. Breast Cancer Journeys is a blog I started writing several years ago which took older pieces of my writing on breast cancer, and placed them in their own wordpress blog.
So when it was decided that I would write a blog for our website, I did not want to reinvent the wheel. The title will stay the same, and be placed on both sites.
It is very fitting that I write my first blog about major lessons I learned from being part of cancerland twenty years this May. Additional blogs will elaborate on these most important lessons. To paraphrase Pat Conroy, he once said he writes to explain life to himself and in the process, this helps others. I am hoping that my writing about my cancer journey and the survivors I have met along the way will help others learn from our journey, our mistakes, our victories, and in the process honor all those that have gone before. I have met some incredible survivors. One person said to me once, when do I call myself a survivor? My answer to her was the minute you were diagnosed.
So basically start here: The welcome to Breast Cancer Journeys I wrote 4 years ago. https://breastcancerjourneys.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/welcome-to-breast-cancer-journeys/ Then read the first piece of writing. I wrote this before my double mastectomies in May 1996. This was the only decision I made til this point, and that decision was divinely guided and came to me in about 5 minutes. I told the surgeon this decision in our home. He and his wife were good friends.
Interestingly enough, I went many years only writing bits and pieces of what happened to me after that surgery on other websites. I became a blogger for Dr. D’Adamo on dadamo.com. I wrote about some details for redflagsdaily for Nicholas Regush’s website. It was an honor to write for such a great journalist. He was Peter Jennings medical writer for 10 years, and then he started his website. I wrote columns for him for two years, and he taught me so much and emphasized what I already knew. He was the very best medical writer and for me, editor. As an editor, he told me repeatedly, you write best when you “write what you know. Let someone else explain the research and statistics.” However, the definitive piece of writing which really laid out exactly how my decision process went, and how Divine Guidance saved me by having me make all the right decisions was finally written here in 2012.
http://www.healingjourneys.org/resources/healing-stories/independence-day/ And lastly, an essay which really lays out the environmental aspects to breast cancer. I consider this essay as a definitive piece including not just me, but the mother of George Washington Mary Ball Washington, and Rachel Carson.
