The Warrior | From Previvor to Survivor
In September 2025, I made the quick trip to New Orleans to finish what my doctor had started back in February. I walked into the hospital as a "Previvor”: someone taking a proactive, albeit grueling, step to stay ahead of a high cancer risk that insurance companies had spent years telling me wasn't "high enough" to worry about.
I was there for an 8-hour double mastectomy and a DIEP flap reconstruction. This was the "marathon" I had spent months preparing for, the weight I had forced myself to gain and the skin my six pregnancies had gifted me were finally being put to use.
The 8-Hour Marathon
The surgery was a microsurgical masterpiece. For 8 hours, the team at the Center for Restorative Breast Surgery painstakingly moved my own tissue to rebuild me, sewing blood vessels thinner than a strand of hair under a microscope.
The first 48 hours post-op were a blur of "Doppler checks." Every hour, a nurse would come in to listen for the "whoosh-whoosh" of blood flow in my new tissue. My life was measured in those sounds. I was exhausted, I was sore, and I was walking like a "T-Rex" because of the hip-to-hip incision on my abdomen, but I felt like I had won. I thought the war was over.
The One-Week Shock
Seven days later, at my follow-up appointment, my identity shifted forever. The pathology report from the tissue removed during the mastectomy came back.
IDC (Invasive Ductal Carcinoma)
DCIS (Ductal Carcinoma in Situ)
ADH (Atypical Ductal Hyperplasia)
The cancer wasn't a "risk" anymore. It was already there. It was hiding.
If I hadn't pushed for early intervention, if I had listened to the insurance company's "uneducated opinion," or if I hadn't pivoted to New Orleans when the local system failed me, how long would it have stayed hidden?
The "Backwards" Battle
Because my journey happened "backwards", mastectomy first, diagnosis second, we had to pivot again. A standard biopsy didn’t work. To ensure the cancer hadn't spread, I had to undergo a second surgery to remove 14 out of 20 lymph nodes on my left side.
Waiting for those results was the longest week of my life. But when the news finally came that the nodes were clear, I realized something profound: The "extra" weight I hated gaining and the pregnancy skin I had always cherished were the very things that carried the cancer out of my body. My children’s legacy didn't just rebuild me; God used everything to find the truth that saved me.
