My blog never took off as I had intended in 2008 but I am here and healthy seven years after being diagnosed and treated for breast cancer.  The journey has been one that takes on a new life as I became part of a group that deals with a new regimen.  I have changed so much since I heard that cancer was found in my body.  It changed me irreversibly and I became more aware that things can go wrong and that life is a gift to treasure.

I was diagnosed only about a month before my mother passed from stage 4 breast cancer.  She was diagnosed in 2000 and lived for six years.  She knew that the large tumor on her breast was cancer and yet she chose to ignore mammograms.  The cancer spread to her bones and her neck bones were very fragile and about to crumble when she agreed to go to the doctor.  She was immediately sent in for surgery to help fuse the bones.  She had trouble walking and in pain as I had visited her and noticed that she was taking one step at a time on the stairs and was using my old bedroom in the house as a storage area for refuse as she was too busy to bring garbage downstairs.  At this point, my grandmother was transported to my parents house and they were selling her house on Robert Street.

My grandmother was a strong, independent woman who had been widowed in 1964 and we remained a tight bunch in town.  Mom, being an only child, gave her all to take care of her mother who had wanted to remain in her large house separate from us in the same town.  My grandmother was a Sagitarian like me and I understood her fierce need to keep her domain.  Even when we moved to London for two years and left our cat with her, she brought a puppy in.  She wanted to continue gardening and growing her plants that bloomed beautifully every year.  Her youngest brother who also lived in town continued to cut the grass and help with chores and fix-it jobs and my father was there with his ladder when needed although he was scared of heights.  We were a close bunch who were there for one another.  Holidays were celebrated at Grandmother's house until they became a regular when my parents purchased their own house a few blocks away.  Grandmother would still prepare some dishes for the occasion as she was the best cook in the family.  She had the recipes from Ukraine that she had mastered to perfection.  Over the years, whenever family visited the town, they knew that her dining room would be festooned with dishes and bowls of Ukrainian food.

I come from a long line of strong women.  My grandmother studied business in Poland as she was sent to school far away from her home near Berezany in Western Ukraine.  She married a man who became mayor and they only had one child as it was wartime.  They fled their homestead, a house which still stands where she had chickens, goats and a cow as the Germans bombed from above and the Russians were marching through the fields.  My grandmother remembers seeing her first American soldier!  They spent several years as displaced persons in camps in Austria until they reached the German port and sailed to America.  Both parents fled with their family and my father's family had 2 births along the way.  My Uncle Walter and Aunt Marusia were born on the run in 1945 and 1946 to Teofilia, my father's step-mother.  My father was the oldest in the family and was ready to go to high school by the time he arrived in New York.  His family settled in Watervliet, NY near Albany.  He worked for Ford Motor Company while attending and paying for his college tuition at Rensaleer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.  He burned the midnight oil studying hard to be a chemical engineer and helped with the family.   Looking through both of my parents' yearbooks shows how talented they both were as they began their lives in America.  They both graduated from college and were the first in their families to achieve degrees!!

My mother arrived and was housed by family in Hillside, NJ.  They lived in the basement of Dmytro Kyzyma's house as he sponsored the family.  He had come to America during WW1 and had settled down in New Jersey with his wife and three daughters.  My grandfather and grandmother found work in Newark and my mother began 4th grade in the US.  She learned German along the way and now had to master English.  My grandfather worked for the government and wore a Stetson hat and suit to work daily.  My grandmother sewed mattresses for Serta and sewed clothes and prepared meals daily.  They took baths in a large tub in the middle of the kitchen and boiled their water as they had no hot water or toilet in the rented rooms.  There was an outhouse out back.  They were the immigrants who arrived with thousands of others from war torn European countries during WW2.  My mother was involved in the same grade school I attended and taught at....St. John's, a Ukrainian Catholic elementary school that first was located on Morton St. in Newark and later moved to Sanford Avenue along with the new parish church.  The Ukrainian community was alive and well in the surrounding area and my mother took part in many activities and scouting groups that retained the Ukrainian spirit in "the new country".