I am the luckiest.

Dogs are perfect. They forgive easily, love hard, ask almost nothing from us, think our arrival back in their presence is magical, and carry a rare kind of unfiltered, deep joy few can muster. 

Dogs have only one flaw. They don't stay here on earth with us nearly as long as we need them to. I needed Oliver to stay with me forever. Whatever my forever is. But that was never in the cards. Despite the knowledge that their will life will be relatively short, and the entry ticket comes with a required return, we willingly open our hearts to the kind of love that spills out and bursts like fire. 

Oliver gave me unconditional love like no one ever has, the kind of adoration that reminded me daily how much I mattered to him. He sat with me when I was sad, danced with me in times of happiness, let me rub him for as long as I wanted when I needed comfort, and made me laugh out loud in the most small, unimportant moments. 

Endlessly charming, even in his final months everyone who met him assumed he was still in his youth. And so many are surprised he is gone because despite intellectual awareness of his disease he never seemed ill. 

But in the last several weeks, I noticed incremental changes. He tried to hide them, never wanting to feel my hurt or fear. And yet, while his spirit never dampened and his soul remained as sweet as ever, his body decided it had offered enough time.

I've had a few other experiences in life that have left me feeling as ripped open, raw, and lost as I feel right now. And in the moments when the depth of the breathtakingly impossible pain seeps in, I remember the weight of him leaning into me. I hear him playing with his toys. Or barking at absolutely everything that moved. I remember that this precious, kind, trusting, beautiful soul found mine and I got not only ten wonderful years with him - but a final one with something I had been seeking for a long time: Peace. 

Being truly at peace, feeling safe and calm, can be easily taken for granted. He and I found that together in this final year, and I feel immensely grateful for it. Because of him I am better, stronger, wiser, healthier, happier, and know how incredibly fortunate I am. My life doesn't read like a streak of lucky breaks. But when it comes to Oliver, I am the luckiest.

Oliver Miles

fall 2014 - summer 2025

My soulmate, my angel, my greatest love.

The wait is the worst

 This last ten days have been hard, much harder than I let on to most. The waiting and wondering about a new health challenge was a lot to manage emotionally. 

And while I am writing to say I finally have the results and I do not have breast cancer - which is amazing - I want to acknowledge those who waited with me. 

Thank you to those who checked in and hoped for a good outcome with me. And most importantly for acknowledging that even when the result is good news, it can be unbelievably hard to avoid the fear that accompanies the wait. 

Time to exhale.

Don't tell me I'm too young for this

 My PET CT scan that revealed an area of concern, prompting the first of five different scans or tests (including a biopsy), took place on April 24, 2025. So for those who check every so often to hear the latest updates and musings from me (thank you), you now know why I've been so quiet on my blog. It's not to create a sense of drama that I have held off on sharing this part of the journey. It's that I do not see the point in telling however many of you there are I'm facing a possible additional diagnosis until I know enough to warrant the details being shared. 

(feel free to Google this and you'll likely find the one I really wanted to use. It had additional words.)

For those who have experienced an MRI guided breast biopsy, you know. For those who haven't, I hope you never, ever do. 

My best description doesn't include the word pain. But it is very overwhelming and emotionally intense.

(and pro tip: if they don't tell you - shower before you go in because you can't shower for 48 hours after and I'm - at best - annoyed by that).

One thing I've learned in the last month or so is this area of the body, as it relates to things not right, is not taken nearly as seriously as it should be - particularly the younger you are. 

Someone (or several someone's) is going to read this and wonder if I'm referring to them. Let that go and learn this lesson for the future: don't ever (or ever again) tell someone they are 'too young' to have breast cancer, be worried they have breast cancer, or pursuing tests that will concretely identify whether they do.

Ever.

I wish I could give this advice to physicians too, because I heard it (or some version of it) from no less than four adult people with medical degrees in the last month. I even like one of them very much.

I'm always curious about things I'm facing so I looked this up. The difference between someone in their 40's (that's me, I'm 44) and someone in their 50's getting breast cancer is 1 in 65 vs 1 in 42 according to the National Cancer Institute. That's not enough difference to warrant the comment (or the belief) that someone in their 40's is 'too young.' 

So for now and for the next several days, I wait. 

Gratitude & Grace

 It's hard to be 'grateful' for PET CT scans. I have them every eight weeks or so. Overall, they're not really that bad. I can't eat that morning which on any given day is no big deal and on another is a bummer. It's time consuming. But I live really close to the medical facility, so it's not that bad. And they're always on schedule (we all know that's pretty miraculous). It's one of the many occasions I get poked at with a needle each month - which for anyone is never enjoyable and for me can be a challenge. Especially if you took away my ability to hydrate. 

Not the worst experience, certainly...but grateful....that's probably going a tad too far. 

With that said, I became grateful for my most recent PET CT scan. Because it highlighted another area of concern. One that most certainly would not have been found until whatever it ends up being was much more than whatever it is now. 

A mammogram in the fall of 2024 didn't catch it. Maybe it wasn't there then. A new mammogram in April 2025 (requested because something was lighting up on the PET CT scan) didn't really give anyone additional concern. Neither did an ultrasound of the same area. Everyone kept saying (I'm paraphrasing here) 'there's something there, but it looks like nothing.' 

Just not 'nothing' enough to stop the testing, scanning, and poking. 

The cancer treatment I'm on was doing a good job. Actually, if treatments had feelings that would cause offense. It's doing a great job. My pain had decreased immensely. No more nausea. And the most recent scans showed a 'quieting' of the growth of the tumors. 

I'm now grateful no one told me it might not have worked at all. I guess that seems obvious in hindsight; but it never occurred to me it wouldn't work. I've been more consumed by how long until it doesn't work anymore. 

A few days before the next test, an MRI of the right breast, the pain in my liver started creeping back into my life. So did the nausea. And if you've ever had a breast MRI you know the position of the scan puts you face down. My upper abdominal area didn't appreciate that. It's just 23 minutes of scanning. But getting up off that machine was a challenge. 

Getting a call that same evening was unexpected. I suspect that's half the reason I hung up the phone after learning I have a suspicious mass in the right breast that will need an MRI guided biopsy, and sobbed.

It's not my nature to pick up the phone and call someone for support when I'm sad or scared. Not initially. My MO is to sit quietly, to settle into my own thoughts and feelings about something. And maybe more profoundly, my choice not to involve anyone is most definitely because I never want to create drama - particularly around an unknown. And at this point, there's still unknowns.

But I called someone who has become an incredible friend, someone who I subconsciously knew would probably drop everything and beeline for my house without my having to ask. And she did. 

She let me cry and she held my hand and she allowed me to release more than four months of sadness, fear, pain, and disappointment into the room. Despite the unknown. Despite the fact that even if this is yet another terrible challenge I may be faced with, it was caught early and won't be nearly as awful as what I'm already going through. Her grace in that moment let me feel all that was rising to the surface and spilling over. She assured me it's okay to have reached a point where it's all too much. 

Which allowed me to see: