There's a saying about dance like no one's watching, sing like no one's listening. Live your life doing the things that are important and matter to you. So what happens when that whole world gets shaken up like a snowglobe, only when everything is done falling, it's not the way it was? Sometimes I finally feel like I am getting my life back on track, able to cope with the new norm, and bam! Something new comes along to shake me up and let me fall back to pieces in the wrong places. And I ask myself, "how am I going to get thru this hurdle this time?"
When the hurricanes came thru Fl. and did so much destruction in 2004, I was going thru my 2nd battle with cancer. It wasn't enough to deal with my life being turned very which way and faced personal destruction, then I had the destruction to my home to have to cope with as well. Thank G-d for my mom.
Among everything that was destroyed in my home was the journal I had started to tell my story.
After finding this site, I find myself trying to put my story back into words. Perhaps in the telling, I will be able to help myself get the pieces back together in some sembelance of new norm, so that when, not if, but when, my snowglobe life gets shaken up again, I'll be ready.
My journey into what has become the snowglobe that's my life, begain in 2001 witha phone call early on a Mon. morning from my primary care doc. I had been working mostly as a dispatcher or in the crime lab at my local police dept. I had spent the 20yrs before that as a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and held numerous Red Cross instructor certifications. Doc asked if I had worked the night shift the night before, since it sounded like he woke me. Nope, I said, I had a migraine and called in sick. It still wasn't sinking into that sleep fuzz brain that the doc himself was calling, that's never a good sign. He told me I needed to come into his office that day and pick up a referral he had for me for a surgeon. Now I started waking up fast! They had found a very minute calcification in my right breast. I shouldn't worry, but because of my history he wasn't taking chances. I shouldn't worry. Right, and I can tell the sun not to rise tomorrow.So the journey began, 1st stop, camping out on the river denial. I have no family close by, my mom at the time lived in N.J.,my brother & his family were close to her, and my other brother that I don't have the greatest relationship in the world with, lives with his family in Tenn. and here I was in Fl. The cancer was aggressive, and that might be understating it. I saw the surgeon within a week of the doc's phone call. Now the surgeon could feel the lump. Surgery for a lumpectomy was planned for within less then 2 weeks. A co-worker and good friend said she would take me for the surgery and wouldn't take any arguement. She wasn't getting one
I told mom not to fly down till after, if there was any reason for her to. I was in denial alright. It doesn't matter how old you are, when you are going in for surgery, seeing your mom waiting for you in the pre op area. I was never so happy as I had been that morning to see her sitting there. 
