Fourteen years in the Air Force taught me how to push through exhaustion, how to stand tall when every muscle screamed for rest. But medically retiring didn’t prepare me for this. Breast cancer doesn’t care about military discipline. It doesn’t care that I am a single mother with a child who relies on me for everything. Some mornings, the physical and mental toll traps me in bed for the day.

The irony is a heavy weight in our family right now. While I face my own diagnosis, my grandmother is fighting her own battle, enduring the brutal cycles of the "red devil" chemotherapy. Watching her go through that toxicity while my own body weakens feels like a cruel mirror. We should be taking care of her, yet we are both trapped in the trenches of cancer at the exact same time.

My battleground right now is a relentless schedule: week-long radiation treatments, every single day, for a month straight. The logistics alone are crushing me. The cost of gas to drive back and forth, the lodging expenses when the travel is too much, and the mountain of medical bills piling up on my counter have become more than I can bear on my own. My retirement income only stretches so far, and the financial stress is a suffocating secondary disease.

I am writing this because I need help. I cannot carry this heavy rucksack by myself anymore. Yet, even in the darkest, most exhausting hours in that hospital bed, I know I am not alone. God is with me. I feel His presence in the quiet moments when the room is still, and I know with every fiber of my being that He will pull me through this storm.