There’s no real good way to break the news, as Katie and I have learned – we just found out Katie has breast cancer.  We’re telling the world now as within a month she’ll lose her hair so there won’t be much to hide anymore.  This is not something I ever wanted to hear about the woman I love, have spent the last 15 years with and expect to spend the rest of my life with.  Also we’ve been overwhelmed with the support and kindness from our circle of friends, family and colleagues.  We really, really appreciate everything offered in words and deeds so far.

We found out from a call from the doctor while we were driving – all Katie did was grab my hand as we were driving and I knew the news wasn’t good. Given Katie’s age (35), the fact she’s a mom and her family has _no_ history of breast cancer this was quite a shock.

We met with the oncology team this week and got the full prognosis.  The good news is that Katie’s cancer was caught early enough where the doctors feel good about her outlook.  Like she’s in the bucket where this should all work out just fine.

The bad news is on the various scales of how aggressive her cancer is – she was three for three for bad on the good to bad scale.  The doctors all said Katie should be patting herself on the back for finding the tumor when she did.  6 months or a year from now Katie likely would have been facing very dire circumstances if the cancer had been left untreated.  Katie has more details on her blog here.

Katie’s looking at 4-6 months of the really crappy chemo that will knock her hair out and likely make her feel like crap for the entire time.  Unfortunately all the new age hyper targeted chemo’s don’t apply in her situation.  She gets the bazooka chemo treatment (ie. kill anything that moves good, bad or otherwise).  But better a shitty 6 months to a year for a disease free lifetime.

So we’re off on this journey and though freaked out beyond belief – we’re trying to life our lives.  As many before Katie have said – Katie might have cancer, but we’re going to not let cancer get Katie.