A Letter to Cancer, at the End of my Battle

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Janice Jastrzebski battled breast cancer at Day Kimball Hospital for a year-and-a-half. And she won! Over the course of her 17 months of treatment, Janice had chemotherapy every Wednesday. And every Wednesday, during that time, she wrote a letter. She wrote most of those letters to "the loves of her life," not knowing what the outcome would be for her. On her last day of treatment, Janice changed things up a bit, and wrote the letter below to her breast cancer instead.

Hello to the loves of my life,

It's Wednesday...so here I am. I want to do something different this week. If I were to write a letter to Cancer...it would probably go something like this....

Dear Breast Cancer,

The joke is on you if you thought coming into my life on May 10, 2013 was going to be disastrous. You should be sorry for messing with so many lives. That wasn't very nice of you.

You will be surprised to know that your ass is getting whipped with today's technology. Many more of us are surviving your disease.

You are making people pay more attention to their bodies. And if they do get the bad news that they have cancer, they are putting on their boxing gloves. You don't stand a chance against attitude, knowledge, medications, chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.

You don't stand a chance against the opposing team. My team. The oncology group that has my back. Plus my family and friends. You are outnumbered.

You may think you have the upper hand. But every day new treatments, medications are being discovered that are destroying your ugly cells.

I have just finished 16 months of treatments. Last test is normal. So you lose this battle. Someday...the war will be over. You will not be on the winning team...

...hmmmm..not bad....
But there's more...

I believe that someday you will be on the same list as leprosy. That there will be more progress made to eliminate you completely. But for now, knowing they have treatments today that are killing cancer cells is work in progress. We've come a long way. We are at our highest survival rate ever.

I'm a good example of that. From Stage 3, Her2 gene positive and estrogen positive to normal readings on my last test. That's saying something, isn't it.

So you may keep rearing your ugly cells in people's bodies. But no one fights alone. We will get stronger and knowledge is power. Your days are numbered.

You better watch your back. I have a super team. Their weapons include adriamycin, cytoxan, taxol, abaxane, herceptin. Radiation is another one of the big guns. You don't stand a chance.

So there you have it, what I would say to Cancer. Can't really mail it because it doesn't have a home address. It lives everywhere and anywhere. That is why we need to beat this. And someday everyone will have the same chance to survive, that I had.

Attitude is everything...

It's time to kick some ass.

Well, back to work.
Love and hugs,
Me

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