What is this?

June 16, 2009. Nearly 43 years old, I got the “You-have-breast-cancer” look from a radiologist. By mid-August I was diagnosed with Stage IIa Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, estrogen and progesterone receptive, HER2 negative. Thankfully, these were my breast surgeon’s words immediately following the diagnosis: “It’s treatable; it’s curable.”

The smallish mass in my left breast had a little satellite floating nearby and the cancer had gone to one lymph node. With medical information changing daily, I was failing miserably at keeping family and friends updated via email, so I started putting “updates” on a private website created through Lotsahelpinghands.

And this fall, those updates are evolving into a public blog: www.stayingstrong-linda.blogspot.com – a story in and of itself.

“Linda Malcolm Real Time” is a glimpse of life moving on after that year hiccup. After the biopsies, three surgeries, chemo and radiation – and now cancer-free. And with a couple months away from writing, plunged knee-deep in “research” with my family this summer, I feel many a story bubbling in my head – about rodents (yes, again…), summer nights outside, baling hay, eating lobster, and living as a breast cancer survivor.

Staying strong and moving on,

Linda