Seriously, cancer, you've got the worst timing.

I got the call on 6/15/15, the one I'd been dreading yet waiting for. It was inevitable, as I saw it. I'd been waiting to hear this ugly news for years. I've never been an optimist. So when she said that the small mass of microcalcifications in my left breast was malignant, I didn't even cry. There was the full-body rush of burning adrenalin, but my voice didn't even crack when I asked her, in a clinical manner, what would be next.

What followed was a flurry of activity over the course of the next two weeks, and all of my choices were suddenly taken away from me. More biopsies, during which it was discovered that the cancer had indeed infiltrated at least one axillary lymph node. The insertion of a port (a chest port/"portacath") for easy chemo infusion/blood draws. ("I don't want any of this!" I screamed to myself). Alas, too bad. Surgery is an inevitability, but my onco team recommended neo-adjuvant chemotherapy, to see how the malignancy(ies?) reacts to the onslaught of poison.

Now, you see, my DH and I had been working on getting the hell out of our useless/hellish job situations and this horrible part of the state. He's been looking for another job for months; I was waiting for something to come through for him before making a concerted effort at job-hunting for myself. It's all come together so oddly...