My name is April and I’m from Cibolo, Texas.  It was May 15th a year ago, that I discovered a lump in my right breast that turned out to be stage 2 breast cancer. What a journey it has been. In the beginning, I was scared. Scared for my family and scared of the unknown. You hear cancer and you automatically think death is knocking at your door. Everyone I had know who had cancer is now deceased, so your mind automatically thinks the worse. I decided I wasn’t going to cry and feel sorry for myself but fight with everything in my arsenal to win this battle. I had tough days. It was not easy fighting cancer, dealing with chemo, losing my hair, and facing uncertainty, but giving up was never an option. Through the prayers and support of my family and friends, eating healthy, and staying positive, I am here a year later cancer-free. Cancer made me realize how precious life is. During chemo, I’d lay there and think of all the things I wanted to do, but always put off for another time. If my cancer had been fatal, then I would never have done any of them. Now I am living my life not just existing in it, doing all the things I enjoy and wanted to do. No more putting anything off for the future.

Cancer is no laughing matter, but for me, I tried to laugh as much as possible. It works, laughter is really the best medicine. I asked my fiancé to explain my journey in his words. He wrote this poem for me to the Beverly Hillbillies tune.

This fueled my laughter:

Aprils Breast Cancer story (sung to the Beverly Hillbillies theme song)

This here’s a story about a lady named Perez

April is her first name with hair a fiery red

Then one day she was washing up her boob

And what did she find but something awfully rude

A lump that is… hard and cold… like a frozen pea

Next thing you know she’s losing all her hair

The good Doc said let’s get them out of there

It looks like Mastectomy is what is going to be

And we’ll reconstruct your boobs with your own anatomy.

So off to the OR where surgery was done

All the tissue was removed till cancer there was none

Her boobs reconstructed from her belly and her buns

Her man couldn’t wait just to play with them for fun

So now that she’s healed up she’s looking really stacked

Her belly nice and tight and looking really flat

She calls it BC fitness just because of this one fact

She’s sporting her own six pack and a really nice rack.