While shopping with my daughter for last minute holiday gifts for her fourth-grade teachers, in December 2006, my story of breast cancer survivorship began. It is a moment that I will never forget. My cell phone rang. “I’m sorry,” said the doctor who did my biopsy a few days earlier, “but the biopsy was positive, you have breast cancer.”

Rushing to leave the store, my daughter asked me, “Mommy what happened?” She could see through the façade I attempted. All that I could think to do was to head for our car. I knew her questions would come soon, because she knew about my biopsy.

A few days earlier, while volunteering at her class holiday party, I had to leave early to get to the hospital for my breast biopsy. Moms don’t normally leave class parties early, so I had to explain to her that I had something important to do, while reassuring her.

That day at the mall, there was no possible way to avoid the look of shock on my face. “We have to get out of here,” I remember saying as we headed to our car.

As I started my car, my ten-year-old daughter asked me, “Mommy, do you have breast cancer,” and then she started to cry. I got out of the car and went to sit and hug her in the back seat. “Yes, I said, but I will be okay and we will get through this together.” I wondered at the time if I believed my own words.

It was a mother’s worse nightmare. She was in deep pain and so was I, my heart racing, as we headed home. I called my husband at his office on the way asking him to meet us as soon as possible.

Later that day, I received a phone call from the radiologist who did my biopsy. “I’m sorry; I did not think it would be cancer.” It looked like exactly like a benign cyst, but I wanted to do the biopsy anyway just to be sure. She wished me the best and I went back to having dinner with my family.

Little did I know what the diagnosis meant to us at this point. I knew that I would do whatever it took to survive, but I didn’t know of the tremendous journey ahead and the emotional pain my family and I were soon to endure.

I underwent a complete mastectomy along with simultaneous insertion of expander implants to begin breast reconstruction. Unfortunately the cancer had spread into a couple of my lymph nodes, which was not discovered during the biopsy done during mastectomy. So I had to endure a second surgery, just a week later, with a challenging recovery. My goal at that point was to get to the life-saving chemotherapy as soon as possible. I had to pull myself up and keep pushing on ahead.

I started chemo as soon as I was reasonably recovered and had a chemo port implanted in my chest to make it a little easier for me to have the drugs administered.

I began my fight strong and courageous. I drove my daughter to and from school and tried to keep my head up. I did this for myself and for my family. As the mother of a daughter only age ten at the time, I knew I had to work hard to keep things normal at home.

After the third chemo, I lost all of my hair and that was truly devastating. I also became very tired and weak and at times could barely stay awake to pick up my daughter from school. I later lost my eyelashes and eyebrows and my weight plummeted to 90 pounds.

I am sharing this with you not to scare you, but to let you know of the harsh realities women face during the process of treatment for breast cancer. It really is the big “C”!

But, I was one of the fortunate ones, because I survived. Some of the women who I sat with during chemo did not. One had a little boy and no husband. Some had no insurance and therefore no access to the best drugs for the nausea caused by chemotherapy. All held their heads up high during the process, hoping their story would be one of strength and conquest.