The Beginning
January 1998
I was trapped in hell . . . . . a hell of my own making. Two and a half years prior to this date, I married a man I had no business marrying. Our relationship should have never evolved past a first date, let alone progress to marriage. I ignored all of the glaring, neon-flashing red flags because I was desperate to find my soulmate. Even my then-preteen daughter could see how unsuitable he was, but I dismissed her concerns. You see, even prior to our marriage, my so-called soulmate seemed to have a secret life. He would be gone for long hours at a time, supposedly working. But even that became obviously false when he was gone far longer than any work assignment would have required. He also lied about innocuous things; things that would have been just as easy or harmless to tell the truth. One night he went to a strip club with his co-workers and failed to come home at all; another time he came home with lipstick on his shirt. He always had some excuse and I chose to believe him because it would have been too embarrassing to admit that I had chosen another loser and had failed at yet another relationship. I didn’t have the best judgment when it came to picking suitable men with whom to have a relationship. Ya’ think?
After four years of enduring this behavior from him, it began to take a toll on me. I became obsessed on figuring out where he was at all times and why he always took his phone calls out of my earshot. I felt I was being turned into a private detective to figure out what was going on. His fidelity (or lack of it) became the topic that ruled my life. I had been chain-smoking due to my anxiety over the state of our marriage and had become irritable and unpleasant to be around. I would fantasize about just taking off for the West Coast and leaving my life and marriage behind. I just wanted the old “me” back again; an independent, intelligent and adventurous woman who wanted to, more than anything else, enjoy life once again!
February 1998
I realized that smoking was something very detrimental to my health, but found myself incapable of giving it up. I sincerely wanted to quit this disgusting habit for not only my health, but for the health of my daughter. On top of that, I had lost a maternal aunt to ovarian cancer a year before and I didn’t want to end up in the same dire situation. I had heard about a drug called Zyban (also known as Wellbutin) which was being used to help people stop smoking. I obtained a prescription for it from my doctor and began the treatment. I was instructed that I could continue smoking for two weeks while taking the drug and at the end of two weeks I would no longer desire to smoke. It sounded too good to be true; and, frankly, I was quite skeptical that it would work. But . . . WORK IT DID!! I was thrilled to be free of the hold that cigarettes had over me. I’m also happy to report that I haven’t wanted or had a cigarette since that time.
April, 14th 1998
Two days after Easter Sunday, I went for my routine mammogram. It turned out to be anything but routine. While I was waiting to get the word that my x-rays had been reviewed and I was cleared to leave, I leafed through a People magazine and the thought ran through my mind that they were taking an awfully long time to review my results. I brushed it off to the staff being busy, but when more time elapsed, I got a bit anxious. That’s when a technician told me that they were trying to retrieve last year’s mammogram to compare it to the one they had just taken. I was still keeping it together, when I was asked to go to another room so that an ultrasound could be done. That’s when I knew that something was horribly wrong. During the ultrasound, a male technician told a female attendant that it looked like the lesion was on the chest wall, as if I wasn’t in the room. At the conclusion of the ultrasound, I was advised to come back for further imaging in two days. OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! I’m only 46 years old! How could this be happening to me??? It stills astounds me how someone’s life can be totally turned upside down in the blink of an eye. A mere hour before this appointment, life was “normal” and now my very life was at stake. Because of all the stress I had been under in my marriage, I KNEW that this abnormality was the Big C——the one thing I had feared since I was a young child was finally happening to me. My more immediate concerns were that all the adrenaline now pumping through me forced me to find a bathroom in a hurry and to realize that I was quite late in picking up my daughter from school. I left the clinic in a haze and drove to my daughter’s school in an altered state. I did my best to keep my panic from my daughter and calmly explained to her what had just happened. She took it surprisingly well. Upon returning home, I called a close friend from work and then my mother, pouring my heart out to each of them. I didn’t call my husband. I waited until he came home to tell him and he seemed to take the news in stride. However I had no idea where to go from here.