Anniversary!!!!

Hello out there!!!

Six years ago, today I was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma.  I thought I would start the entry from an excerpt from my first enrty on this blog.

"It was a few weeks later. I was eating pizza in my friend's dorm and reality struck again. I had been coughing up blood all day...don't freak out, it really wasn't that much. I just knew that it wasnt' right. I called my mom to tell her; which was strange because I am usually the kind of girl who would say "it will go away tomorrow". Mom of course was paniced. She asked if I had smoked anything....of course NOT TRUE. She told me to go to the ER right away. Disgruntled and scared, I did. My friends waited there with me...which was about 3 hours by the way. I eventually got a chest X-Ray and that is really when my world turned upside down. There was no more naive Lauren, no more "nothing will happen to me", no more being 18. The doctor thought I may have cancer. My friends came into the room to console me, but they were boys and were completely thrown off guard when I was crying. I called my parents and they came to the hospital (1 hr and 45 mins to get to Frostburg....normally 2 hours). I stayed in the hospital overnight. In the morning they did a full body CT and that is when we found the tumor in my right butt muscle. I also had over 15 tumors in my lungs.



My world was spinning. Life was a blur. What was in store? What was going on? Why Me? Why?"
 
It is truly amazing to see where I am at today!!! I have certainly been through it all.  Loved and lost many....but here I am.  I don't know if I would change the person I have become because of my diagnosis.  I wish it hadn't taken cancer for me to become the woman I am, but I love her.  I look at life in a way that every one should.  Relationships are the most important thing we have on this earth.  It doesn't matter how much money you make, or any of the material things we collect as we live.  It is the friendships and the experiences we have that make our lives worth living. I look forward to many more years.  For now, I look to June for my next piece of mind (that's when I get scanned again)