Day 29 of Run 31, and today’s mile belongs to Robin – who found her own cancer because she kept dreaming about her mother.

Listen to Robin’s story

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The dreams

Robin’s mother had stage IV breast cancer and was given a year to live. Chemotherapy worked, and she lived another eleven.

Years after her mother died, Robin started having recurring dreams about her. They came often enough that she found herself thinking about her mom, and about the last years of her life.

Robin had never had a mammogram. She didn’t think she was at risk – she’d always believed her mother’s case was a different situation. But the dreams reminded her of the breast self-examination training she’d been given back in college.

So she examined herself. And that’s when she found a lump.

“I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t dreamed about her. After my diagnosis, the dreams stopped. I believe my mother had been looking after me in the only way she could.”

What came next

Mammograms, ultrasounds, biopsies, MRIs, and more doctor’s appointments than she could count. Two surgeries inside a single week.

Her doctors believed the cancer might have been growing for more than ten years, and it had spread to lymph nodes beyond her armpits. Then came chemotherapy, radiation, and several years of hormone therapy.

She’s honest about the chemo. Some people tolerate it reasonably well. She didn’t. Severe side effects, and days when she thought about giving up. She says she still tears up thinking about that stretch.

She also had what’s commonly called chemo brain. Her example: driving through town, looking at a green traffic light, and thinking, “Wait, does green mean stop or go?”

Her conclusion: driving under the influence of chemotherapy ought to be a traffic violation.

“Bald chicks are hot”

Then there was the hair.

Robin’s husband was a fan of the TV show Farscape, and especially of Zhaan – a blue-skinned, bald character. When Robin started losing her hair, he told her cheerfully that bald chicks are hot. Then he helped her shave her head.

During treatment she joined a support group, and this is the part of her story that’ll surprise you. In her words, they had so much fun.

A bunch of bald and almost-bald women with regular lunch dates. They went swimming, shopping and walking. They celebrated birthdays and threw parties for whatever reason they could come up with. They teased their cancer doctors whenever they ran into them.

And in between all of that, they got each other through the hard parts.

Learning to accept help

At her very first support group meeting, Robin mentioned she was driving to Seattle alone for a second opinion. A woman she’d just met offered to take her. For some reason, Robin said yes.

They became close friends. That friend later died of cancer, and Robin says she’ll always be grateful for her kindness.

That yes turned into something Robin now tells other people:

“Accepting help doesn’t make us weak. In fact, it brings people closer. And here’s another way to look at it: by accepting someone’s help today, you’re giving yourself a little leverage to make sure they accept yours someday, when you’re able to return the favor.”

Life still happens

Robin says that during treatment, the word cancer starts to define you. You stop being a person and become a cancer patient.

But the rest of life keeps going anyway. She watched it happen to the women around her – a young single mother raising a child while going through intensive chemo, women whose husbands left after their diagnoses, mothers with metastatic cancer trying to get their affairs in order for young kids. Some were grieving a spouse while in treatment themselves. Others were fighting to keep their jobs. Plenty were in real financial trouble.

And what she wants you to know about those women is this:

“They weren’t just cancer patients. They had dreams. They had careers. They had hopes. They were warriors.”

What Robin wants you to take from this

She’s been following this month’s stories, and she says they reminded her of the women she met during her own treatment. Her takeaway from all of them is one line:

Early detection can make a tremendous difference.

Her own cancer was found in time to treat. But she still wonders whether it could have been caught before it reached her lymph nodes if she’d started getting mammograms sooner.

She’s been relatively healthy and NED – no evidence of disease – for more than fifteen years.

And these days

Robin keeps chickens. Nineteen of them. She spends her time tending to them and making the people around her smile, which anyone who’s met her will confirm she’s very good at.

Robin, today we run for you. Thank you for writing all of this down for us.

Run for them. Get screened for you.

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