Thanksgiving at my parents’ house 2024. All the Cooper kids together.

My 43rd birthday with my love.

My 43rd birthday with. my family, minus. Ava in France.

Ava turned 19 in France. She loved being there and will certainly go back.

Brielle turned 14 on Dec. 21st. Love her so much.

Christmas morning 2024. Ava with her haul of books.

Payton girl. Jeff made her a stand for her fish tank and to put her jungle of plants on.

Brielle with her freebie Victoria’s Secret blanket.

The “kids’ table” Christmas dinner at my parents house 2024.

From November to New Years is always a very busy time of year for everybody, but for us it means Ava’s, mine and Brielle’s birthdays thrown into the chaos of the holiday season. This year I’ve been extra cognizant of how precious the time spent with loved ones is. It’s difficult living with a diagnosis hanging over your head that could be the end of you. On the one hand you want to throw caution to the wind and live loudly and do all the things you’ve ever dreamed of doing. As an over-thinker and a planner, letting go of what might happen and live in the now has been nearly impossible.

As I wrapped Christmas presents in my bedroom this year, I put on a new Netflix movie starring Lindsay Lohan called Our Little Secret. It’s a Hallmark movie-esque storyline filled with impossibilities and silliness. I liked it, but Jeff caught the last 15 minutes of it and was grateful I hadn’t made him watch it with me. In the movie you learn early on that her mother passed away when she was in high school. There is a scene years later when her dad is selling her childhood home when she is crying and she says, “I miss my mom.”

The tears started flowing and I started praying out loud, “Please God. Please let me live a long life where my girls don’t have to face the coming years without me.” They say bargaining is part of the grief process and I slip in and out of it. When Jeff saw that I had been crying he tried to understand why. “But you’re alive right now. The doctor thinks you have decades ahead of you.” I explained the above scene and how it affected me. I think it’s called anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief refers to the feeling of grief occurring before an impending loss according to Wikipedia. I don’t think Jeff fully understood it, but that scenario where I burst into tears thinking about my kids missing me or needing me and I’m already gone happens more often than I’d like it to.

I read a book called Radical Remission. It’s a collection of stories about people with stage 4 cancers who have had dire diagnoses and have managed to overcome them through changing their life in some way. It advises that people who have gone into long-term remission stay positive that they will beat the disease or have beat the disease. Beyond that they change something physically, mentally, or spiritually. One person went to a Chinese herbalist. One person meditated daily and did tai-chi to balance their “chi” and banish their cancer. One person decided laughter really is the best medicine and chose to watch things that made her laugh daily. The list goes on. It gave me hope, but also made me skeptical. I’m sure the people featured in that book have not been the only people with cancer to change something about their life in order to try to beat cancer, but to spite their best efforts the majority still pass away from their disease.

I want to be in the small percentage of people diagnosed with de novo oligometastatic breast cancer that go on to live a full life with their cancer in remission. But the nurse in me is hard to deal with. She wants stats and studies proving that I’ll live, but when she goes searching for the information to prove that she’ll survive, she doesn’t find it. I’ve talked about this before, but breast cancer is a multi-faceted cancer with different sub-types and it makes it very difficult to find exactly what I have and compare it to the studies because many lack the differentiation of subtypes in their results.

I guess this is where faith comes in. My husband Jeff, a heathen growing up in the capital of Mormonism without religion in his life has a beautiful unpretentious simple faith in God. He has great faith in me too. I haven’t attended church regularly for at least five years and I’m still trying to figure out what I believe, but I do know that I believe in Jesus. When I was initially diagnosed the story of the woman who had a blood disorder and touched Jesus’ robe as he walked passed in order to be healed has replayed again and again in my mind. If I were to encounter Jesus today, would I have the faith to think to myself…I’m gonna sneak right close to this man and touch the hem of his robe. That will cure my cancer for sure. I want to have that kind of faith. I believe in the power of prayer and the collective power of willing something to be and I know that I am lucky enough to have an army of people praying for me. For that I am humbled and so very grateful.

On Tuesday December 31st I’ll ring in the new year by having both of my breasts removed. I have no doubt that it’s the right thing to do, just as I knew in the beginning that just leaving my tumors in my body and taking oral meds to help stop the disease was not the right thing for me. However, I still mourn the loss of my breasts. In a big way (no pun intended) they are a part of my identity as a woman. They nourished both of my daughters. I remember looking down at baby Brielle in the early morning light as she nursed and relishing that I could bond with my baby in such a primal, intimate way. In the years after my divorce Ava and Brielle would cuddle me on either side and rest their heads on my breasts. Ava dubbed them the best pillows in the world. One night Brielle said, “Mom, I just love your boobs. They’re so comfortable.” Ava replied, “We all love mom’s boobs, Brielle. Get over it.” They were a part of the reason my husband was initially attracted to me, although he now reassures me that he doesn’t care if I have breasts as long as he has me. It’s a sweet sentiment, but I know the removal of my breasts will change things, just as being put into menopause has changed things. We fumble our way forward trying to find humor in this sometimes dark place called cancer. I look on pinterest at beautiful tattoos on reconstructed breasts and plan for the future, because it’s what I do. For better or worse I’m a planner, so I’ll keep planning. I’m planning on sticking around for a very long time, the nurse in me be damned.