It was breast cancer

(Brittany Nunn contributed to this story)

In March 2003, a couple of weeks before a routine mammogram, Old Lake highlands resident Diana Miller couldn’t seem to stop thinking about breast cancer.

She wasn’t sure why, but she had started musing obsessively about what she would do if she found out she had breast cancer — how she would react, how she would tell her husband and her three young children.

“I wasn’t really worried about it, but all these things were on my mind,” she says.

During the mammogram, the doctors found calcification in Miller’s breast tissue, which looks like little flecks of sand that can’t be felt.

“I was a little concerned,” Miller says, “but the doctors were very upfront with me. They said 80 percent of the time they are benign, and only 20 percent of the time they’re breast cancer, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a great ratio.’ ”

The doctors said they would do a biopsy and call her later that day to tell her the result.

“So I hung around the house, and I wasn’t really worried about it, but again, all these things are going through my mind,” she says.

Then the radiologist called and told her the news: It was breast cancer.

Miller didn’t panic; rather, she remained calm and asked a lot of questions. “The radiologist was like, ‘Wow, you seem to be really on top of things; are you OK?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I’m fine,’” Miller recalls.

“So we talked for a little longer, and then I got off the phone, walked into the living room, sat down on the sofa and cried really hard for about 10 or 15 minutes — just really sobbing.

“Then I thought, ‘OK, enough of this; I’ve got work to do.’ "

When she called her husband to let him know, he asked if she was OK, and she assured him she was.

“as the days went on, I thought I was so wise and so smart; I had all these questions ready and had everything figured out. I was really proud of myself,” Miller says, laughing.

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“But then I realized it wasn’t me at all. It was really God guiding me and preparing me. When I realized that, it was like a new life inside of me. I felt a peace about the situation because I knew it was in His hands, and what’s a better winning team?”

The doctors found the cancer so early that Miller didn’t need chemotherapy, only radiation.

“Every day that I would go in for radiation, I was excited because I was one day closer to being healed,” Miller says.

Not only was the radiation making her cancer-free, but it also gave her an opportunity to meet other women who were going through the healing process.

“I met so many different women of all different ages and stages of cancer. It ran the gamut, and we’d all be sitting in the waiting room together in these gowns, each waiting to be called,” she says.

“The stories I would hear and the different attitudes, it was very it’s hard to describe bonding, but it was more like we had a spiritual connection. It was a very important part of that journey.”

There were times she felt a little guilty when she met women who had harder experiences with breast cancer than she did, but she was grateful she had the opportunity to be a part of their journeys.

“It sounds really weird, but it really was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. People always say, ‘How can you say that?’ But it really was.”

Today Miller has been cancer-free for 10 years. She participates in as many breast cancer events as possible, and she continues to bond with other breast cancer survivors.

“It’s a little like being in a sorority,” Miller jokes. “Even if we’re not the same age, we’re sisters and we have that bond. ... if this had not happened to me, I could not serve others in that way. So that has been huge.”