The response to my blog yesterday was overwhelming. I’m grateful to everyone for the telephone calls and emails of support. I thank the neighbor who raced to my door to deliver a hug and a good dose of humor, both so important. I’d also like to thank a breast cancer survivor in my book club and her husband. Their calm solid advice in those first hours following my diagnosis was critical to saving my sanity. Though, they say writers have no sanity. But that’s a discussion for another day.

It’s amazing to me how many women in my small circle have had breast cancer: three in my book club, two neighbors within a stone’s throw of my house, a close friend’s sister who had a double mastectomy this June.

The surgeon who will operate on my tumor tells me the survival rate is now eighty-five percent.
She called me yesterday with good news. My chest x-ray shows the lungs are free of cancer cells. The blood work shows the liver and bones are clear as well.

There are so many medical terms I never thought I’d have an interest in or need to know. My HER2 report came back undecided and has been sent to a lab for more analysis. According to the Mayo Clinic, HER2 stands for human epidermal growth factor receptor-2. If the HER2 report is positive, that means the cancer is more aggressive.

I’ve been thinking of the hours I spent researching osteomyelitis, a bone infection I gave to the main character in my novel, The Still Voice. How dry that research was compared to what I’m looking into now. Still, for my character Sophia, the news that she had osteomyelitis in her foot was no less devastating. Imagine being a young girl in a prestigious dance school—a feeder school to a major ballet company—only to be told you should not dance. That story is taken from real life. It happened to my mother.

Ironically, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels suffered osteomyelitis when he was a boy. An operation on his left thigh was unsuccessful and left that leg shorter than the right. He was crippled for life.

That’s all for today’s report. Its focus is more medical in nature than I’d intended. The content will probably be different every time, and it will come out on a semi regular basis.

Juliane C.