When the nurse phoned me at 8:30 a.m. on December 15, 2015 to ask if I could make it to the hospital the same day, I knew it was serious. Receiving confirmation that same morning that I had breast cancer was devastating.

When I was suddenly diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, I really did go into shock the first few weeks. I think it's wrong to say that the diagnosis is the start of your journey. It is by no way a journey. It's a bad trip as far as I'm concerned.

In 2003, I was a happily married, active, stay-at-home mom in Calgary, Alberta, where I was born and raised. I was 46 years old and filled my days going to the gym to work out, volunteering at the school and church, and running an active household. My son was 13 and my daughters were 11 and 8 at the time. I felt healthy and not overly stressed.

“Great to see you back to your normal self,” a friend said to me recently. I nodded, and smiled my best fake smile. It’s been three years since my original diagnosis of breast cancer, two years since the end of treatment, and 18 months since my bilateral mastectomy. I've been bald, radiated, sliced, diced and pieced back together. I am strong. I am happy. But I am nowhere near “back to my normal self.”

I found a lump in my left breast by accident in the summer of 2006, shortly after I had turned 40. After a mammogram and biopsy, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was multicentric DCIS and quite aggressive. In short, this led to a whirlwind treatment and surgery plan that involved chemo, a bilateral mastectomy, radiation, a hysterectomy and eventually reconstruction surgery. 

Patricia Stoop, 43, is a wife, mother, and home care occupational therapist living in a small city in British Columbia. In 2011, she found some lumps in her breast and was diagnosed with an aggressive, locally advanced HER-2 breast cancer.