Breast cancer made Cara realize that she was just existing and not really living. In fighting back, she learned the most important lesson of her life.
Cara's Story
"I had lost sight of everything else in my life."
I was studying to be a Lotus-Domino [a type of computer programming] consultant, and I had all these exams to pass, and I had just lost sight of everything else in my life. Relationships, friendships, family -- nothing mattered except getting that certification. I ultimately passed the exam. I was so excited. I was going to have the career that I dreamed of.
"This is too big for me."
About a week later, I was having a lumpectomy. I woke up in the recovery room and the surgeon was crying and telling my folks that it was malignant.
I went home and stayed there for the entire weekend and sobbed -- just sobbed. I thought it was the end of the world and then at some point, I realized, "This is too big for me." I was keeping a diary at that point and in my diary I had written, "This is too big for me. I can't do this on my own."
"I never took those tango lessons."
When the doctors said, "We need you to have a biopsy," one of the first thoughts that popped into my head was, "I never took those tango lessons, I never read those books, I never did any of those things, and, I'm not going to have the opportunity to do that anymore," because I thought it was a death sentence.
I had never known anyone before who'd had cancer, and I just thought that was the end of the world. I decided I would make a list of all the things that I had never done, and during the recovery period between surgery and chemotherapies, I would do all those things.
"You can come out looking a heck of a lot better than when you went in."
I had not had surgery since I was four. I said goodbye to my breast the day before, so I was prepared to wake up and it not be there, but I was frightened of that. The truth of the matter is, they have surgery to fix that. Probably the hardest thing for me was when my hair fell out, but when it came back in, it was a different color. It had been somewhat salt-and-pepper grey before. It came back in this beautiful, chocolate brown color. And instead of it being straight and stringy, it had so much body. It was like you could just run your fingers through it right out of the shower, and it would do anything you wanted. I had this gorgeous hair I had always dreamed of. I had this bosom like I had always dreamed of.
"You can take almost any situation and turn it into something good if you're willing to trust, if you're willing to be open to the good."
Cancer taught me how to live. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me, because it showed me that for the 45 years I'd been alive, I was not really living -- I was just existing. I think a lot of people are that way. We go through life half asleep.
Before breast cancer I was a person who always had to obey the rules, stay within the lines, a perfectionist. There's something about looking death in the face that makes you think, "I don't care anymore. What can hurt me? Who can threaten me? What boss?" It just turned me into a person -- it's still a journey and I'm not there yet -- who is much more willing to take risks, much more willing to be who I am.