The always vivacious Carol Joynt began her blog yesterday with the following words:
It took a few days to come to terms with the words that lead this post: I. Have. Breast. Cancer. At first, I allowed them in my head in only a whisper: I have breast cancer. Soon I had to speak to them to myself. I have breast cancer. And now, I have to learn to say them to others. "I have breast cancer." To my son. To our dearest friends. To people I'm acquainted with who matter to me. And here, too, on this blog. I have to own them, let them in. I thought long and hard about posting them here--should I? shouldn't I?''-- but realized it's happening not only to me, its happening to one in six women, and it's real; it is the very core of "swimming in quicksand." If breast cancer isn't a swim in quicksand then what is? A doctor said, "you are in a large sisterhood."
You don't see it coming. One day life is normal, and the next its off the cliffside.