My Story

First I should say, "Grab a drink, settle into your comfy chair and put your feet up.

It's a  L O N G story!"

I am a very outspoken though not loud woman who believes in Peace, Tolerance, Compassion, and Harmony. I am Canadian, Buddhist, Libra, a pacifist and an activist.  I follow a path of non-violence and promote love for all beings, human and otherwise. Playing guitar, carving female forms in wood or soapstone, and planning for my future are some of the creative things I enjoy.

Of course, my driving passion is writing. I had filled almost 4 hardcover Journals with poetry from the time I was 12 until the fall of 2002.  Much to my horror,  those books were stolen during a break-in while I was away from home for 2 weeks. All the poetry I had written in my life was in those books and in one instant it was lost. Thankfully, some poems were scattered in the archives of this website, in a rough draft of my manuscript on floppy disk, and in my patchy memory. Over time, I have been able to remember bits and pieces of some of the poems from my teens, but I know there are at least 250 that I will never see again. It was heartbreaking but I emerged stronger and more mature in my writing.  I am also much more careful to make multiple copies. 

Included in the lost pages were poems about another obstacle in my life. During an extended trip through the States, life suddenly threw me a very tough challenge. During my monthly breast self-exam in September 1995, I found a lentil-sized lump in my right breast. Being diligent about my BSE every month, I knew this was something new. I immediately went to a Walk-In Clinic where an attending physician told me it was a cyst and said that if I stopped drinking coffee it would go away.

I was refused a mammogram because I was under 40 and therefore "too young to have breast cancer".

I went home and did as I was told, going from my one cup a day to none. I even gave away my tea bags. By October the lump was still there but the size had doubled. Again I was told it was a cyst and not to worry. In November, with a walnut-sized growth in my breast that I could feel no matter where I pressed, I asked for another doctor and was referred to a breast specialist. Through a needle aspiration, he withdrew about 50 cc's (ml) of fluid from the "cyst", frowned and sent me home with the reassurance that 32 was indeed too young to have breast cancer*.  On December 22, I went back with a rock-hard breast and a honey coloured discharge from my right nipple. The doctor aspirated more fluid from the breast, this time to be sent to the lab, and said he would call me in a few days with the results.  I took a cab home to wait it out, already knowing what the results would be. Just 20 minutes after I got in the door, the specialist called me personally to tell me that he had run the tests himself after I left the clinic. He had decided that the fluid's colour was suspicious and that, coupled with the nipple discharge, prompted him to be concerned. He regretted to inform me that there were malignant cells in the fluid. I was in Stage 3 of very aggressive breast cancer.  

The esteemed Doc explained the abnormally rapid growth and the need to "act quickly". Ironically, if they had in fact "acted quickly" and I had been given a Mammogram three months earlier when I first felt the lump, it could have been removed through a tiny incision (lumpectomy) and left an almost invisible scar. Instead, I lost my entire right breast and all the lymph glands in that underarm. 

The enemy is a silent one. There is rarely pain involved and only an outward sign in rare cases. All I felt aside from the ever-growing lump was fatigue.

I was thousands of miles from home and in no financial position to change that. This left me trapped in a strange town with no family or friends for support. If it weren't for the kindness of two wonderful women I had met just prior to my diagnosis, I would not have had the strength to feed myself. They visited me almost daily, bringing me soup and rubbing my legs when the marrow ached so badly I couldn't bear it.

Following my mastectomy on January 8th, 1996 I had adjunctive chemotherapy until that April, and have been cancer-free ever since. 

Karen Godson