After I thought I was in a place where I could breath a little, my doctor said enough is enough, you are overworked and stressed out and you need to slow down and take care of yourself. he said the weight along with all the stress will kill me. Well I did slow down a little to have the excess skin removed and went to a cosmetic surgeon. He explained everything to me and I gave it a lot of thought because I did not want to go under the knife again. After praying and giving it more thought, I decided to go ahead and have the cosmetic surgery done. I had a breast reduction, a tummy tuck and lypo on my hips. Well it was a six hour surgery but thank God I went though with flying colors! After coming home, I went in for my weekly check up and the doctor said the surgeries went really well but we found something in your breast reduction. He sent everything to the lab for testing and said results would come in two days. Well of course I was a nervous wreck. I was in the office on Monday and I had to wait until Thursday to get the results. Well finally it was here, I went to the doctor’s office alone and he said something that no one wants to hear, “You have breast cancer.” The doctor said because we have taken some of the tissue when we did the reduction, it’s best to remove everything to be sure. Not hesitating I got another opinion and they were both the same; everything needs to be removed, lymnotes and all. A month later I had the surgery. If I didn’t stop and listen to my body with all the stress and just being tired it could have been worse. We as women think that we are superwomen but there has to be a balance between family and work and we must find that balance.

I really shut down and I didn’t talk about it for sometime. Several years went by and I still was the caretaker for everyone but I did slow down enough to take care of ME!

After, my life changed so drastically. My husband’s illness became worse so because it was so stressful trying to run the business and be a care taker, I shut down the business and focused on the family and myself. It was hard to balance it all. Unfortunately, my husband passed away and I got a call about a year later to help with fund raising for a breast cancer organization. At first I said no I would call them back and let them know. Well they called me several times and I heard God say to me it’s time to tell your story and to let women and men know that you have to listen your body and learn how to balance as much as you can. You haven’t talked about your situation and you could be help to someone that is going through the same thing.

Well as I began my fundraising campaign, I would meet so many people that would listen to my story and ask me if I could help them with just some of the little things.