04/19/2023
Get your b***s checked.
I recently had a breast cancer scare and it was terrifying. It was a tough few weeks and it had me thinking about one of my favorite quotes from my grandmother “just because the doctors tell you to roll over and die, doesn’t mean you have to listen to them”.
In the 70s my grams had colon cancer and the doctors gave her 6 months to live. She wasn’t ready to go, and she decided she wasn’t going. She was the toughest, most stubborn little thing, one of 12 kids that grew up on a farm in central Mass growing corn. Even all the brothers of the family were scared of my Grams 💪😂 She did beat that cancer, by sheer willpower and determination I’m sure, and also some major lifestyle and diet changes, a testament to the power of the human mind and our ability to heal ourselves. Around 2010 the doctors again said she was going to die. She was on hospice care and all her major systems were shutting down. My dad asked my mom to take her in while she passed. My mom, who is also a major badass, was actually recovering from open heart surgery herself. But she took my Grandmother in because she loves my dad so much. Well Grammy still just wasn’t ready to go. She couldn’t walk at this point but she would drag herself around with her arms and w**d the garden. My grandfather would drive an hour each way to be with her. One day she was talking about her cancer to my mom and she said “that doctor told me I had 3 months left to live. Well guess where he is now……DEAD!” 🤣🤣 My mom kept nursing her up so well over the next 2 years, she got to go home to live with my Dedah again! My grandfather died a year or two later, in the house he had been born in and they had raised my dad in. My grams did end up passing away a few years ago, in her 90s. I guess she decided she was ready. I think about them all the time, my ancestors, but especially the women- my mother, my grandmothers, their mothers, and so on. All the prayers us women put out for our babies that keep carrying through time. What an honor it is, to come from all these tenacious, lionhearted women. To be one myself. And I will be damned if I ever just roll over and die because some doctor tells me to 👊