Issue link: http://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/85232
018: pinkfeature Breast Cancer Blogging & Baking, WORDS BY: MONICA WILLIAMS NOW THIS TITLE DOESN'T DEFINE WHO I AM, BUT THOSE ARE CERTAINLY WORDS THAT APPLY VERY MUCH TO MY LIFE So how does baking, blogging and breast cancer work into my life? Well it started when my third child was born in 2007. I stopped working and although I had always baked, I seriously started baking everything. I baked bread and all our biscuits and treats for my wee family in order to ease up on the food shopping budget. In no short time this turned into baking cakes and treats for family and friends and before long I was supplying birthday cakes on a weekly basis. To record my progress in the baking department I started taking photos on my cheap point and shoot and started a blog to document it all. It wasn't a very interesting blog unless you were into baking; it featured recipes that I liked and tried along with some rather average pictures of cakes I had made. It was all pretty surface stuff. This went on for a while and my baking progressed to the point where I was convinced by a friend to enter a local television show about baking. This turned out to be the first season of New Zealand's Hottest Home Baker. I lasted three episodes before baking a burnt batch of green tea biscuits. Oh the shame! The result of being on that show was great though, as I did more baking for others and took up a regular post of catering for a local sports club every Saturday over the summer of 2010. However, on the night that the final aired between Toni and Emma on the television show, I had worries of my own which put being knocked out the competition from burnt biscuits into utter insignificance. The day prior I had a biopsy taken on my left breast from a tiny pea sized lump that I had found two months before, just before my 30th birthday. On the 31st March 2010, my husband and I naively went to see the surgical team for the results of my biopsy only to have my life change dramatically. The surgeon sat down and said, "You have cancer". My world stopped and the tears flowed immediately. After sitting in a daze through the rest of the surgeon's words, the nurses flapping busily about me, handing me brochures and tissues, taking blood, giving more leaflets and words, my husband and I stumbled out to the car park and sat in the car wondering what had just happened to our lives. All I could think about was how do I tell everyone? How can I do this to them? Not many people knew about the biopsy and now I'm going to throw them all into a spin. I have cancer. CANCER. I have a lot of family overseas, including both of my brothers – how do I tell them all? How do I let them know what this is like, how do I calm their fears and let them know what the plan is? Holy cow, what IS the plan? So after the heartbreaking job of telling our parents and immediate family around us I went to the computer, sat down and opened up my blog and wrote a post that was to change everything my blog was about. The purpose of my blog was now different and had a different function – to communicate with my beloved family and friends who were desperate for information. "FOR ME, WRITING HAS ALWAYS BEEN A RELEASE AND A WAY TO WORK OUT MY EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS BUT MOSTLY THESE HAD BEEN CONFINED TO PRIVATE JOURNALS."