A Survivor's Story

Since it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to talk about a remarkable woman and her story about breast cancer. We’ll call her Dee, for privacy sake.


This woman is “grandma” to my kids. She had 7 boys, but always longed for a girl. She adopted us when we started attending our church, 3 years ago. She has been very dear to us ever since. Last summer, we took a trip out to Pennsylvania to visit family and friends and when we returned, she pulled me aside to tell me that she had found a lump. I felt like I had been kicked in the gut. It was devastating news. But, instead of getting down about it, I joined her in prayer for her healing. We know God is the ultimate physician and could heal her, if that was His will.


About a month after she found the lump, she was finally able to get in to see the doctor. She went through a battery of test and the results said cancer. That was easy to take because the rest of the news was that it had spread into her lymph nodes and once it does that, it’s in the rest of the body.


They scheduled her for surgery on Friday morning (2 months after first finding the lump) and we went to visit her on Saturday morning. She was sitting on a chair, waiting for her discharge papers! She looked great and was feeling great. I could not believe that this older woman, just had a mastectomy 24 hours ago and was getting ready to leave the hospital!


A couple days later, we went to her house to check on her and take her dinner and she looked remarkable! She took me into one of the bedrooms and showed me the after affects of the surgery. It’s one site that is forever burned into my memory.


She still had to go through testing to see if the cancer had spread. The power of prayer beat this terrible, life threatening disease. Not only did the cancer not spread, but she has been marked as cancer free! No chemo, no radiation therapy. She has to take some medicine for 5 years, but that beats what one would “typically” have to go through with cancer.


She will tell you how very important it is to do your self checks every month and at the first sign of something being different, go to the doctor! If you find something yourself, the chances of you beating the disease are much greater than if you were to wait until you went to the doctor for a check up.


God has a very special plan for our Dee and I’m so thankful that I’m around to be a part of her life!


For a story of a woman who is actually going through breast cancer treatment right now, go check out her journal and she lets you know what's happening, when it's happening. Let Sylvie know you're thinking about her.