Surviving Breast Cancer Has Made Me Feel Strong and Beautiful! by Michele Vongerichten

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I went to the doctor’s office alone.  My husband offered to go, but he had to work. “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” confident that my biopsy results would be fine.  The moment my doctor turned around and said he had bad news for me was surreal.  I am a take charge, go-getter person and I vowed to fight this disease and beat it.  I drove to my husband’s job and didn’t have to say a word – he could see it in my eyes.  Determined to be strong, I was still terrified – it was a word I never expected to hear regarding my own health and mortality.  There is no history of cancer in my family.  My job is marketing manager for a high end boat manufacturer.  I am in the public eye, working with customers and dealers, and my appearance is important to me – I was worried how I would look during treatments, worrying that I would have those around me focusing on me, the cancer patient, instead of the messages I was conveying about our business. 

When the decision was made to get chemo as an aggressive, preventative measure, I immediately signed up for the Look Good…Feel Better program, as well as stopping by the local cancer association’s Wig Closet.  My Look Good…Feel Better  program was shortly after my first chemo session, after I had cut my long brown, beautifully thick hair into a short cut that I wouldn’t get attached to, because it was going to fall off.  Cutting my hair was a devasting day – it was the day we decided to go with chemo, and the same day I stopped to look at wigs.  I cried while trying on wigs, feeling suddenly really like a cancer patient and not just as a surgical patient healing.  It hit home for me – I have CANCER and I will be undergoing treatment that will not only affect my body and mind, but my hair will fall out and I will look like a freak. I cried harder while getting my hair cut off, and my husband cried with me, knowing that it was as if a part of me was already gone.  The surgery was easy.  This was devasting.  Starting chemo the next week, I was determined to get through it with as much mental and physical strength as I could – I would and could do it!  The side effects hit me very hard and shook my confidence to the core.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue with the chemo, but decided that the first one was the worst, and I would keep going. 

When I attended the Look Good…Feel Better workshop, I went with excitement about something just for us women to help build our self esteem.  Boy, did I need it!  With the short ugly hair and the looming knowledge that I would soon be bald, I wanted to learn as much as I could about keeping up my appearance and spirits.  Although the youngest in the class at 46, I felt a kindred spirit in the women who were there with me.  The bag of makeup and products were amazing – the level of quality in what we were playing with and trying on was not what I was expecting and it was so much fun to learn the tips and tricks that would help us.  I returned home feeling like I could stay beautiful, and that I was not alone!  I could do this!  Fifteen days after chemo, we shaved my head.  It was not as traumatic as cutting it, because I knew I was beating the cancer.  I began wearing wigs I had purchased to work and out for errands – and it was a fun game at work of “which look would I have today?” because I had gotten wigs in varying shades of the beautiful brown my hair had been, and lengths from the below shoulders I started with to fun shags, a bob and a short style I knew I’d be wearing when my hair returned.  My eyelashes and eyebrows were still there, so I felt and looked normal. 

I have gone through the hell of chemo, gotten through the weeks of radiation and am growing my hair, eyebrows and eyelashes slowly in.  As I look at myself and the transformations my physical body has made, and the scars across my chest – these are my battle scars.  They are proof I have been to war with breast cancer and armed with the tools and information that I have received from Look Good…Feel Better, the help from the American Cancer Society, my family and friends, and my own inner strength – I have found that it is my courage and strong will to live that has proven to light the fire in my core – and that radiates to my smile and my determination.  I am a survivor, I am a beautiful woman and I will be here on this earth a long time.