“I, Douglas A. Ducey, Governor of the State of Arizona, do hereby extend greetings and best wishes for all observing the week of March 6 – 12, 2017, as Cancer Survivors’ 2nd Act Celebration Week.
I congratulate A2ndAct.org for its work in supporting and celebrating women survivors of all cancers, and I invite the citizens of Arizona to join me in recognizing these women survivors for their many contributions to the citizens of our beautiful state.”
What an honor for us all!
Yet, as my mother used to say, “You can’t un-ring a bell.” I did contract ovarian cancer, and it taught me that all I had gone through with breast cancer was a walk in the park compared to the complexities and difficulties of treating ovarian cancer.
I was almost gone by the time ovarian cancer was diagnosed, and no one expected me to survive the first occurrence, much less all the recurrences that have followed. The surgeries, the complications, the chemotherapies – they all left me feeling flayed alive, stripped down layer by layer, and abandoned in heaps and piles all over a room I could not leave.
The darkest moment in my cancer journey was the day I received the news of my diagnosis. The news came from my doctor in a phone call as I was leaving my uncle’s funeral and on the way to his celebration of life.