A Chance Meeting?

It was 1991. I had just finished a grueling year and a half of cancer treatment for Stage IV Metastasized Breast Cancer in the Bones. I was doing well. I was happy and relieved that it was over.

How I had come to have the treatment was a crazy chance in itself! I had been told by my doctors that I had 18 months to live. There was no hope. There were no treatments. The end.

Then I got a phone call from someone I hadn't heard from in literally years. She told me about a doctor at the University of Washington Cancer Research Center who was doing an experimental treatment for this type of cancer in pre-menopausal women. I was 37 with four little daughters. I went to the University and they took me on.

I underwent a bunch of treatments, weekly IV and daily oral chemotherapy for a year and surgeries and tons of radiation. It was definitely a full time job for me to work the treatment. Then I spent two months in the hospital for a bone-marrow transplant type program. Then more radiation. Now I was DONE! I had purchased four blonde wigs and I looked fabulous!

I asked God to let me help people as I had been helped. The doctors had even asked me to talk to some of their patients who were going through the same treatments! I was feeling very tuned in to people who were suffering, so this chance meeting was something to which I guess I was open!

I stopped at the grocery store on my way home (probably from one of hundreds of doctor appointments). I rounded the corner to the drink-and-chip aisle and saw one of the ladies who worked there sitting on the floor sniffing back tears. I asked her "Are you okay? Can I help you?"

She then proceeded to gush out how she was just diagnosed with metastasized breast cancer in her lungs and had been given a death sentence. She had a little boy about the age of my youngest daughter. I hugged her and told her "I have some hope for you!!"

I gave her the name and phone number of the doctor at the University. He also took her on as a patient. He gave her several more years with her son, and although she later succumbed to the cancer when it spread to her brain, she always cherished our friendship and our "chance meeting" in the grocery store!

God will lead you to help others with what you know!