Monday, April 6th

I made an April's Fools Breakfast for my kids on April Fool's Day.

The juice is real orange juice, but I added unflavored gelatin to make it "orange juice" jello.  The "toast" is pound cake, buttered and toasted in a frying pan.  The "egg white" is vanilla yogurt.  The "egg yolk" is 1/2 apricot (canned.)  Snicker.  I'm not smart--I found it in a magazine, and decided to give it a whirl!  It was kinda fun.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to speak about all the things I've learned from this whole breast cancer adventure at a 5th Sunday meeting in church.  Most of the things I talked about, I have talked about in posts on here, so I'm not going to post my talk.  It was actually a really hard talk to prepare . . . usually when I have been asked to talk in church, I have been given a topic, or a source to get my info from.  Then I just go to those sources, or the scriptures, regurgitate what other people (smarter than myself, of course) have written, add my own comments and thoughts, and that's it!  No worries.  This one was harder--this one was "all me."  I worried and fretted about whether the things I was preparing were "appropriate", "doctrinally correct", etc.  I'm grateful it's over, and hope that in some way, something that I have learned can be of benefit to someone else.

Along that topic . . . this morning I had to take my kids to a medical appointment.  When I got there, one of the people that works there quietly asked me if I knew about one of the women that works there.  I said, "No."  She then told me that because of my experience, they have all been diligent in doing their exams, having mammograms, etc.  (One time when I was in there, I told them my symptoms and the shadow/dimpling that I saw that made me go to the Dr.)  Well, she said that this lady was doing her exam in the mirror and saw a "shadowy" spot on the underside of her breast.  She went to her Dr., and had a mammogram.  She ended up having a biopsy, which came up positive.  A few weeks ago, she underwent a double mastectomy.  Her sentinal nodes were negative for cancerous cells, so she probably won't have to do chemo, and she won't have to do radiation.  I don't know if the shadow is the reason she caught it, or if she would have caught it anyway, but I can honestly say, if my experience causes ONE woman to catch it earlier than I did, it will have been worth it.  I am so glad she caught it early!!!!

There's another lady that lives here.  She found her cancer in about November.  She had a double mastectomy, and they didn't think she was going to have to do chemo.  I just heard that she is doing chemo after all, and has been pretty sick.  Poor lady.  That stuff is brutal.  I would like to do something nice for her, but I don't know what to do yet . . . or how to do it.  I'll have to keep working on this one . . .

One other thing I would like to mention, that I talked about in my church talk.  When I think about the story of Joseph (of Egypt), I often wonder what his thoughts were when he was sitting down in the bottom of a pit, when he was sold, and later, when he was sitting in prison after having chosen the RIGHT thing.  Was he bitter?  Did he wonder why things weren't working out?  He had chosen the right, after all!  Did he know how things were going to work out?  WE know the end of that story, and can see how it all fit into the "plan."  But did he see that?  Or did he just feel bitter, sad, or angry because things weren't working out right then?

One day, I was washing dishes.  That's boring, so my mind was wandering.  All of a sudden, out of the clear blue sky, a phrase from my patriarchal blessing popped into my head.  It was a part that had not previously been fulfilled.  All of a sudden, I realized that it was in the process of being fulfilled, BECAUSE of this cancer experience.  That happened again a few weeks later, with a different phrase.  It was another witness that this whole mess was a necessary part of Heavenly Father's plan for me and for my family.  I don't know why yet, and I don't know what the future holds, but I do know that this learning opportunity was essential for our growth.  Knowing that makes it easier to accept it and have faith in a loving Father regarding my family's future, whatever it holds.