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Welcome to the site I've created to share my journey.
My name is Catherine Cardwell and I am 50 years old. I was diagnosed with uterine cancer (leiomyosarcoma) on 9/7/2007. After my surgery and return home, I began to  search the internet to learn more about my diagnosis. I read statistics after statistics which left me in despair and burdened with a sense of doom. My wonderful husband Rand pulled me out of my darkness and introduced me to Lance Armstrong's website and his story of survivorship. From there I began seeking more stories of survivors and found that statistics are just that...statistics. They say nothing about the individual and their chance for survival. I've read many stories of people whose diagnosis, treatment and chance of survival were much more grim than my own. Some are still healthy and strong after 10 years! I decided that if they can survive, so can I! I invite you to come along and share my journey. Perhaps you'll be touched or learn something about yourself in the process, as I have in having walked this path.
It took a good deal of soul searching in the decision to publish my thoughts, some negative and some positive, on the Internet. It is difficult to open up to complete strangers, but one thing that cancer has taught me is that we are all connected. My specific  experience is dealing with LMS (that’s the easy way of saying and typing leiomyosarcoma), but I feel that others that are fighting different cancers might find an interest in my story. One of the things that cancer taught me is pursuing things that I’d always wanted to do, but somehow always found myself too busy or let any number of life events stand in the way. In other words, follow your dreams. I have always had an interest in photography. After I expressed that to my husband, the next thing I knew we were standing at BestBuy and picking out a camera. At times, he almost threw me in the right direction, but I love him for things like that. So, many of the photographs that you’ll notice throughout this website are from my new passion.
Use the buttons on the left to navigate this website. Start with Memories. Be sure to notice the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page. They take you through the rest of that section. After you’ve checked out Memories click on The Journey. At the bottom of the page are buttons that link to each entry from my journal. Next, click on Chemo Club. It has the same kind of navigation with the buttons at the bottom of the page. The Blog contains the most recent entries in my journal. Other than that just surf around on the site. Random-like. Cathie-like.
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I hope that you enjoy my story. More so, if you are searching for hope and inspiration, that my words might help you gain the strength that you seek.
Look into your heart and you will find that love is what‘s most important.
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