March 11, 2010. This is the day I learned that I had cancer. This is the day that a cancer diagnosis changed my life. Forever. It wasn’t a journey I was planning to take at 51. It’s a trip you hope you never have to make. It’s one that can’t be cancelled or one that you can insure against.

This trip has come as an eye opener and a shock. I feel well. I don’t have breast cancer history in my family. I don’t smoke, am only an occasional drinker, eat well, exercise, am not overweight, and have never been on any medication. I simply don’t get sick. My surgeon tells me that overall I am in excellent health. If I didn’t have pain with my illness, it could have been awhile before I realized I was living with a life-threatening disease.

Cancer came as a thief in the dark night. It prowls along in your body until it finds a point to enter and robs you of your life as you once knew it. And just like the thief that enters your property and makes you feel violated, cancer too enters your body and makes you feel violated—like you should have done more to prevent it from happening.

Cancer stops you in the prime of your life when you are starting to reap the rewards of family life.

Cancer stops you in the prime of your life when you are seeing the fruits of your labor come to fruition in raising two wonderful children to adulthood who are realizing their dreams in graduating with university degrees, getting good jobs, finding wonderful mates, and sharing their adult lives with you in new ways. You move from active parenting to friendship.

Cancer stops you in the prime of your life when you are at the top of your career and you’re starting to think about retirement and making plans that you know will have to be altered.

It’s a time to look back at the challenges of being a wife, mom, and a full time working professional and realize that you done it all, but can no longer be Superwoman—she stopped flying and helping others on March 11.

The day I was diagnosed, I learned that I have a very rare, aggressive form of breast cancer--carcinosarcoma of the breast. The U. S. National Cancer Institute describes this caarsinosarcoma as: “A malignant tumor that is a mixture of carcinoma (cancer of epithelial tissue, which is skin and tissue that lines or covers the internal organs) and sarcoma (cancer of connective tissue, such as bone, cartilage, and fat).”

As I understand it, the cancer I have been diagnosed with is considered a sarcoma rather than breast cancer, but is situated in breast tissue as opposed to somewhere else in my body. Although not considered a breast cancer, the treatment has components of breast cancer with the removal of cancerous tissue through a mastectomy.

The Canadian Cancer Society advised me that carcinosarcoma of the breast strikes about 0.1% of breast cancer patients. My cancer surgeon says it is a form they seldom see in treating breast cancer patients.

My breast cancer nurse educator says a sarcoma oncologist, rather than a breast cancer oncologist, will treat me. Because of its rarity, she says I will be of interest to all of my cancer team caregivers.