My experience with breast cancer began when I was 24, when my mother was diagnosed.

She was a florist and ran her own business. She raised my siblings and me without our father, and was very strong and independent.

I remember her telling her friends that she was “just battling this little bit of breast cancer,” and laughing about it, so that they could feel better. I remember these were the days when we didn’t even use the word “breast” much.

Mom’s lumpectomy became a mastectomy, her radiation became chemotherapy, then it was everywhere, and she died within 18 months of diagnosis.

We took care of her at home. When the hospice people wanted to medicate her so that she “wouldn’t remember anymore,” we made that decision.

Our mother was young and beautiful. She was my best friend. Life without your mother is, I think, quite different. My choices and priorities are not what they would be if she were here.

But I always know what mom would think, would say, and when she would laugh, so she really is always with me.

When I was 37, I felt a lump under my arm. I thought, “This isn’t good” but I didn’t think that I had breast cancer.

I went in right away and had a mammogram, ultrasound, then saw the breast surgeon, who said, “That needs to come out, what are you doing this Thursday?” The word came back on the day we were moving to Kirkland, I left packing boxes to get blood drawn and chest X-rays.

I’d planned to have a double mastectomy in Portland. I had a great relationship with my doctor there, even though we had just met, he invited me to talk to his sister who was a survivor.

He was a lifeline for me, as I was very afraid. My breast cancer buddies call this time, between diagnosis and the beginning of treatment, “the pit of hell,” because of the fear.

When mom was sick, I had read that those who join support groups survive more. I wanted her to join one  so much.

One of the first things I did when we moved was to call Bosom Buddies at EvergreenHealth. The lady who answered the phone there, another lifeline, encouraged me to call Marion Johnson, breast surgeon at EvergreenHealth.

When I called Marion’s office, they were scheduling four to six weeks out. Because I knew what I wanted to do, and because my mother had “waited 90 days to see if the lump went away,” I couldn’t wait six weeks.

I faxed in my pathology, which said things like “highly active cells” and “areas suspicious for vascular invasion.”

On the bottom of it, I wrote about my mother’s rapid illness and asked if Dr. Johnson would see me sooner. Marion called me the same day and I was in her office that week.

My husband Jim and I got married the night before my mastectomy surgery, at the Bellevue Courthouse.

Dr. Johnson created the team who saved me. She thought that I would connect with my oncologists, Dr. Van Haelst, and Dr. Taylor, and she was right.

During my “lost year” of chemotherapy and radiation, I made friends in treatment. People reached out to me in grocery stores. Friends of friends called me. I’ve lost some of these friends to breast cancer. I’m still losing them.

Talking to my doctor’s sister was the beginning of something. The best gift for a newly diagnosed person is to connect with someone who had what you had, and is alive.

People reached out to me, and now I reach out to them. Women meet me and I talk about what happened – as my mother could not.

I tell them that I had aggressive, triple negative breast cancer that had traveled, and that I am OK. And that they will be too.

More information

Evergreen Cancer Lifeline – Bosom Buddies Network is a support group for breast cancer patients and survivors. The group meets from 10 a.m. to noon the first and third Wednesday of the month at EvergreenHealth, room Tan 119. For information, call 206-832-1297 or visit cancerlifeline.org.

Amy Walen is a Kirkland City Councilwoman and chief financial officer of Ford of Kirkland.