Episode 6: The Whole SheBang (Part 2) with Allison List

In Part 2 of "The Whole SheBang", Allison discusses her blog and how that helped with her breast cancer journey, as well as her body image, intimate personal life, and more!

Contact Allison List: 

allisonlistnv@gmail.com 

Resources:

Place your favorite resources that can benefit our audience 

My blog: http://allisonlist.blogspot.com/ 

Young Survivor’s Coalition: https://youngsurvival.org/ 

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/feminine_phenom/ https://www.instagram.com/wearecancerculture/
https://www.instagram.com/rethinkbreastcancer/

Redirect Athletics:
https://redirectathletics.com/ 
Owners are Tisha and Marcell “Yo” LaGrone   (Reno, Nevada)

Transcript

Jamie : 0:00

Well, hello friends. Welcome back to this episode of Test Those Breasts. I am your host, Jamie Vaughn. I am so excited because we actually made a two-part episode for Allison List, who is a former colleague of mine. Our lives sort of collided in such a different way now because of my breast cancer, and we've gotten to know each other more. And the last episode on episode five, Allison really dove deep into her diagnosis, her very unique diagnosis, and how that affected her mentally and physically, and we call these episodes the whole shebang. Now, clearly, we can't, you know, get into every single detail of Allison's life, but really truly, we have covered quite a bit. So we decided to make this into a two-part episode. This time she will be talking about her blog and how she used her blog to promote that healing. So I'm excited. Have a seat, grab a drink, coffee, wine, whatever you want to do, and let's dive in. You know, you mentioned that with this healing process and learning new things and trying to live your life with purpose and significance. I know in your blog you had mentioned something about what your purpose was going to be and what your like for me, last February before I right after I had my thoracic surgery, I had to get my thymoma, I had another tumor that they had to take out. I really had a very difficult time moving forward because I did not feel that I had any purpose whatsoever. I did not feel significant. I was Jamie Vaughn with breast cancer. And because before that, I had just retired right before my diagnosis. Literally one week before my diagnosis, I had a retirement party. And before that, I had all kinds of things going on. I had a full-time job, I had a part-time job, I had a business on the side, I had started another podcast, I had just so many different things that I was doing. And then June 11th, 2022, everything stopped. Everything stopped. And my new focus was the breast cancer and all of the craziness that came after that, losing my hair and just so many different things. So by February, people were thinking, okay, Jamie's getting back to her normal and things like that. And there was no normal. And so I felt no significance. My husband and I started going to therapy because of it. And we're still in therapy because I needed to understand where he was coming from. He needed to understand where I was coming from. And as and we'll talk about this a little later, you know that it really takes a toll on relationships. And so I needed to figure out how I was going to be significant again. You had mentioned in your blog at some point about that significance. And you started a blog. Can you share with us how that happened and how that has helped you move through the process and then moving forward into your healing life?

allison and jamie: 3:43

Yeah. So I want to say that blog is probably five years old now. I'd have to go back and check the dates, but I think it's pretty close to five years old. I started it because I had no outlet, verbal outlet, to really talk about what was happening with me. And my ex-husband, Darren, he's always very supportive about me being open about him, like the struggles that we had during that. Because I also think that's kind of healing for him, but to be able to talk about it, but I couldn't talk to him about any of it. He shut down and I didn't have a partner anymore to be able to say, I'm scared. And I remember I would have to hide in the laundry room and cry. I would sit up all night long and I would ball my eyes out. I would have these horrible nightmares and I couldn't talk to my mom about it because it was so traumatic for my family. People even seeing me, they would break down and start crying. And even my closest circle, and I felt like everybody was already planning my funeral. And so for me to be able to not have the support that I needed, and it's no one's fault. I always try to be very clear about when I explain this, that everyone else's grief and emotion about it all left me no space to be able to talk about it. And so it was like everyone expected me, as I always do with everything, to just pick it up and go and deal with it and move forward. But everybody else was having like these reactions and emotional responses. Like Bruce Meisner and Mark Scazafava sat and cried in my kitchen. And I'm sitting there trying to explain to them, you know, what was happening. And I all of a sudden am holding space for them because they're having this emotional response. And it was like that with my mom. But I don't know what that's like as a mother to have a daughter going through cancer. So it was like I was taking care of everybody else, but there was no space for me. And so I'm a very verbal person. I will sit here and talk to you till next Tuesday if you want to. You know what I mean? Like I will just keep going. And verbal communication is how I heal. In other ways, I can do that too, but verbally, I need to be able to speak. And I've always been a writer. And so I remember thinking I've got to start journaling and getting this stuff out because if I don't, it's causing these horrific nightmares. Every night I'd go to sleep and I'd have these nightmares of watching my son fall off a cliff, me diving after him. I was always about death. And I couldn't take it anymore. And so I started journaling. And it started to become my favorite thing to do late at night and early in the morning is to try to get all that stuff out. And I'm so thankful that I did because I was able to chronicologically record exactly what was happening with me in those moments. And then I started to think, you know what? I'm gonna write a blog about this because what I need is to be able to connect with somebody and their experience. And maybe there's somebody out there that's 33, 34, 35, and pregnant that has cancer. If this helps me in this way, maybe there's one other person that it could help. And then I started to blog about it, and then all of a sudden it was like, you've got 20,000 views. You have 20,000 hits, and it would just like boom, blew up. And then a publishing company contacted me and said, Do you want to turn this into a book? And I was like, Hell no. I'm like working on a PhD right now. I don't have time to turn this into a book. And I put it on the back burner and I thought, damn, maybe I should turn it into a book. And it's like just been sitting there for so long. But I've had people reach out to me, find me on Twitter, just different social media platforms, and say, I read your blog and I pass it along to my wife, or I did this, or I did that, or thank you so much. And that has been the coolest experience to have somebody reach out that I have no clue who this person is. I don't know where they live. I don't, and but to know that they found it somehow, or it found them. And they were able to have some sense of peace with me being able to share my story was the healing factor for me. Writing is healing for me. So it was an incredible experience.

Jamie : 7:42

Well, it is very compelling. I read quite a bit of it. In fact, I was so sucked into it last night. I think I fell asleep reading it because I was just so impressed by how much detail and how much you shared with your audience. And I bet you those people that you were holding space for in person, when they read it, they might have been able to process it a little bit more and then make comments and things like that. I did see some comments on there. See, to me, that is just downright inspirational, Allison. And I just think that women like us who want to make a difference in other people's lives, whether it be writing a blog, starting a podcast, whatever, volunteering, whatever it takes to help people move through this process, because it is just really a challenging time for so many women and knowing how many women get breast cancer.

allison and jamie: 8:41

Yeah, it really is.

Jamie : 8:43

And we just need we need more support.

allison and jamie: 8:46

Yeah. What's funny? I'm so close with my mom. And I just didn't ever understand what it meant to be a mother until I was one. And now this is the part where it's like really emotional for me. When I delivered Simona, I remember looking at her and thinking, oh my God, this is what it would be like for my mom when I had to tell her that I had cancer. Looking at this little girl and this little girl having to call me as her mother. And so I could never be upset with my mom for not, you know what I mean? Like in those moments where like we just couldn't quite connect or I couldn't quite talk about what was happening, that cancer impacts everybody in different ways. And it's a community, it's a community epidemic. It's a family epidemic. It is not an individual diagnosis. And everybody deals with it differently. And that kind of goes along with the question you wanted to ask me about advice is that it's really important to understand that people only have the capacity of what they can do. And you have to understand that people really have good intentions of wanting to help, but not everybody can help you in the ways that you want to be helped. And you have to be like you were talking about advocacy. You have to be your own best advocate to figure out what you need, even in those moments when you have no fucking clue. I don't know what I need. You gotta figure it out. You can't expect someone to say the right thing, to do the right thing, to do the things that you need them to do without communicating that. You've got to really internally and figure out what you need, because you're the only one that knows. That's not someone else's fault. And I think that that's what this whole process where it got me to is my dad, Vietnam vet, badass Marine. No one messes with my dad. My dad is like this amazing person, but locked himself in a room and balled his eyes out on the day I got my diagnosis. And I'm making him a grilled cheese and trying to feed him lunch and trying to talk to him because I didn't know. You know, and so we have this whoa, what is going on like role reversal? But I know that I can still be tough as nails, I can still be very resilient, but I also can break down and cry in a heartbeat in a second, and I'm extremely emotional.

Jamie : 10:54

Part of my advice is to find those outlets like the blog or whatever you want to do, but also going to a therapist that you know is not somebody that's super close to you, obviously, so that you can talk to them. And that's what I decided to do is I had a brand new one that I'd never been to, and we're together to this day, and Dr. Terry Ann Harrison, and she's amazing. So for me, my mom died in 2019, and so I have a special relationship with my mom who is no longer with me, but my dad is here, and then of course I have my strong husband, and I think that with parents and husbands, they're always the ones that want to fix things, right? They're watching you have this disease, and they can't do anything about it whatsoever. They're watching you. It's out of their control. Yeah. Right.

allison and jamie: 11:56

It's out of your dad's control, out of your mom's. Yeah, like you can't expect them to know, like they feel just as hopeless and helpless.

Jamie : 12:06

And then with friends, when they're sending you messages via text, sometimes people will say things that are probably not helpful, but we always need to remember that they absolutely have good intentions. And that's the part of what I started talking about in the first episode is some of the things that people would say. So I feel like there is an episode out there where we can talk about helping people with things that they should say or should not say, or should we just let it all just go and let people say whatever they want to say? You know what I mean? I've actually gone back and forth on that one because I know when people say certain things like whether it has to do with religion, I'm not a religious person. So when people would say things like, let God take care of it, like, well, yeah, but uh I'm not religious. And so what do you do with those things? What are some of the things that people may have said that you're like, that's not helpful? How do we educate people on that? Because I didn't even know. I mean, I've said things I know that I have said things that are probably not helpful to people from before breast cancer.

allison and jamie: 13:27

Yeah, guilty as charged. Absolutely. And it's because we don't know what to say. And I think the thing that I always come back to is it's better to say something than nothing. And I know that there's been like if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Well, it's not that you don't have anything nice to say, but it's real, you can always say, I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry that you're going through this. I just don't know what to say. Boom, done. Like instead of not saying anything and then having it said better, and then that makes it even worse. But I think that people lean into that a lot of times because they don't know what to do. And that's okay, but it's perfectly fine to also say, I don't know how to help.

Jamie : 14:07

Then there's the edge of that sword, is that if people don't say anything, we internalize it. I've had friends not say anything to me at all, and I'm like, my gosh, I have breast cancer. Why am I not hearing from so-and-so at all this whole entire time? So, like friendships change, and then when you're all better, they're like, Oh gosh, I've been following you, and I'm so glad you're better. And it's like, well, wait, where were you?

allison and jamie: 14:36

Yeah, and that was the struggle between Darren and I is that Darren lost his mother to leukemia when he was in his like early 20s. And I think me getting sick triggered and pulled all that stuff back up because he was his mother's caretaker and she was his hero. And then I get sick and he shut down, and then it was just like the wedge began and got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and he never communicated. And I think if he were sitting next to me today, and if I would turn to him and say, Darren, what is the one thing that you wish that we would have done better going through the process? There is no doubt in my mind that he would say, I should have communicated. And I think that's a weight that he's always gonna have to carry for the rest of his life, and he has a lot of guilt around that. He just didn't know how. When we were in therapy and we were we were trying all the things, but he couldn't. He could like capacity. We talked about capacity. The silence between people when things get really hard can be pretty damaging. Yeah. Friends, partners.

Jamie : 15:41

Sorry that happened. Yeah, it was damaging, clearly. Now let me ask you something.

allison and jamie: 15:46

How is your relationship now? I wished him happy Father's Day yesterday. I brought him a gift. It's day by day. You know, we've known each other since we were 18 years old. So our relationship goes back a very long time. There are times where things have been very combative between us, and then there's times where we're very civil. We can sit at Marco's baseball games and sit and laugh and make jokes and watch him play. And then things can take a nasty turn when we disagree about something with the kids, and then we don't talk for a week or two. And so it's we are constantly riding the roller coaster of trying to figure things out. I think Darren and I will probably have that space with each other forever. I don't think we'll ever have a hundred percent we get along, we're consistent, we're on the same page, we are going to continue to have bumps in the road. But the good news is we recover from them much quicker now as we're both moving on with our lives. And I will always love him as the father of my kids. Without Darren, I wouldn't have Marco and Simona. So I have a very deep admiration for him. And I have to lean into that when things get really hard between him and I with some co-parenting stuff. But we're both dedicated to be the best parents we can be to our kids. And as long as we stay focused on that, then we're good.

Jamie : 17:04

Yeah, and you mentioned you guys have known each other since you were 18. Were you dating at that time and then moving forward?

allison and jamie: 17:11

No, so we live next door to each other in the dorms in college, and then we became friends, and we Darren was just always around. So like I would move, and then he would be my neighbor, or we were always like within proximity of each other. And then some time passed after we graduated from college and his mom got sick and he was taking care of her. And then after she passed, he traveled, I want to say, for a little while around Europe, and I ran into him shortly after he had come back, and then that's when we started dating. But we had always been good friends and close. Yeah, so we we definitely have a long history with each other, and he's gonna be in my life for the rest of my life.

Jamie : 17:50

He's my kids, and from such a young age, too, of knowing him, we changed so much. Like you are such a different person than you were before. You're Allison at the core, this anomaly, this unique person at the core, but you've changed so much, just like I have in just in one year. I am Jamie Vaughn at the core, but I have so many different perspectives now. And so we just change over time. And I just feel like it's so important for caregivers, spouses to recognize that when their partner gets a disease like this, um, it's not just a smooth sailing road. It's not just taking care of them by giving them their meds and taking them to their doctor's appointments. There's so much emotional parts about this. And my husband has learned quite a bit himself. He's become a lot more empathetic. And again, we're in major therapy together right now, and I'm lucky to have somebody who will do that with me. I know not everybody has that, and I know the statistics of marriages breaking up because of it. And I'm sorry that you became one of those statistics of a broken marriage. You had mentioned to me earlier about body image and dating after breast cancer and having mastectomy, things like that. Can you share a little bit about that with us?

allison and jamie: 19:26

Yeah, I've always been a very confident person with my body and very accepting of whatever it was that my body was doing. I knew for a long time that Darren and I were on a rocky road, but I wasn't gonna give in to the divorce word yet. So then after I got my mastectomy, it was like I'm still with my partner. I don't like he knows that my body has changed, he knows that things were different, but I didn't have to go through this process of explaining the story to him because he was there. He knew the story. He knew that my body looked different. So then after we divorced, dating was never on my radar, or I was like, no, thank you, I'm not doing any of that. And I still have that outlook 98% of the time. I have been out there a little bit, and I remember the first time that I was intimate with somebody after my divorce. It was like this moment of my shirts coming off, and I stopped and went, shit, it's just the mastectomy scars. I don't even know if I had even talked to him about. I think he knew that I no, maybe he didn't know that I had breast cancer because I can remember in that moment stopping and being like, there's something I have to tell you. Midshirt coming off. And he was like, What? I had breast cancer. And I remember he was like, Congratulations. And then in that moment you could see on his face he was like, No, I didn't, like it didn't come out right. I didn't mean to say that, but I could tell he was trying. And I'm like, no, um, what I'm trying to say, what I'm trying to say is you're not, this isn't gonna look like what you are expecting. It was like so hard to be like, I don't have nipples. You know what I mean? I could not get the words out. And I finally did, and everything was fine, and he was just wonderful about it and accepting and comfortable with it, and did not make me feel lesser of a person or any less sexual or anything like that. But it was that moment when I went, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to repeat the story over and over and over again. And what if I don't want to do that? And then it's I got to the point to where I'm comfortable with what my body looks like. And if somebody else has a problem with it, that's on them. That's not my shit to carry. And that's not, and I haven't had that experience yet. But in fact, more than not, people are like, gosh, that's actually kind of like a sexy trait about you. Yeah. And it's interesting because now I have nipple tattoos, so you can see the mastectomy scar straight across, but now I have like actual 3D like looking nipples, which rounds off the whole thing. But that's just as of recently. But I'll tell you what, our breasts are so sexualized, and women are sexualized anyway, but our breasts really are sexualized that you realize that, like I said before, I was fine with removing them because I knew that they were like out to get me, but then things just aren't the same anymore. Like now I've got a bag that's flipped and sticking out one way, and like I take off my shirt and like my it just doesn't look the same, but I don't spend more than a second ever looking at it and going, wish that was different. It's just not, it's not worth my time or my energy.

Jamie : 22:32

What a great outlook. So let's go back to those nipple tattoos because I'm going in for I it's so fascinating. I have a friend of mine who told me that she had breast cancer, and then six years later she went and got nipple tattoos, and she says it was the most crazy thing. She would look in the mirror, and she says it was a game changer.

allison and jamie: 22:55

Oh my gosh, I cannot tell you. So I find I end up reconnecting with a girlfriend from high school who ends up with breast cancer, and so that was really cool. She was young too, and it was after I had gone through all my stuff, and that's who introduced me to this guy named Vinny Myers. And Vinny Myers is like this premiere. Is that who you're going? Is that who you're gonna see? Is he the one in Baltimore? Yeah, he has three locations. He's in Baltimore, he is in Austin, and he is now in San Diego, and that's where I went.

Jamie : 23:24

Yeah, so he's very popular. I know a few people who have gotten their nipple tattoos through him. And so I have to go in August to get my phase two. That's when apparently all the magic happens. That's what I'm hearing. So my surgeon, Dr. Cabling, really did a great job with the first phase. My breasts look better than I had expected. I just did not realize what I was really getting myself into. And I realized so much now that it was the best thing for my body. And but when I woke up and I started healing and all that, I look at my breasts and I don't have any nipples either. And I've got these scars, and they definitely look different, but they're the same size. It's my same skin, it's my skin, it's my tissue and everything. But apparently, when you go back, he's gonna lift and move and make them symmetrical and whatever to make them. That's when all the magic happens. That's all I hear. And so that is when I can do the nipple tattoos. I don't know if I'm going to do it there in August. I do know of a couple of people here in Reno who do them that I may be going to. I have a few different options, but Vinny apparently is one of the best of the best. So your nipples must look amazing.

allison and jamie: 24:45

You know what they really do.

Jamie : 24:49

They really oh he uh here, I'll flip my hair with you.

allison and jamie: 24:56

I can't flip my hair anymore. Right, but you know what you did, but it was there. He is an extremely eccentric person, he's phenomenal at what he does. And I just watched within 60 minutes these things come to life. And thank God one of my best friends, Monty Luis Garcia, was down there with me to support me. I'm and it's like I'm doing the thing, and I sit down and I don't have any tattoos, so I don't know how the process works. And I see like the needles come out and he's mixing the color, and then pretty soon like I drenched, like I sweat through the paper on the table because I'm like, shit, like this is permanent. Like now I feel like after being divorced, I'm like a commitment, like I'm scared of commitment of anything. So I see like the gun come out, and I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, what am I doing? And it hurt like hell. And it was like this crescent size gun with eight needles in it, and he uses that to do the shading. And but in 16 minutes, I look down and I'm like, oh holy shit. I have actual boops again. And I stood in the mirror and I just stared at myself for I don't even know how long because I went, oh my gosh, I was perfectly fine every morning waking up, seeing nothing in the mirror. I it really didn't bother me. And so I was on the fence about should I do the nipples or not? And I was actually like, Dr. Janiga is my plastic surgeon, and he and I go toe-to-toe on lots of things. And he wanted me to get like the actual recon nipple reconstruction done. And I was like, no, thank you, sir. I'm not doing any of that. And so we were just like butt heads on the whole thing. But I he said to me, like, don't do anything. One day you'll just know that you're ready. And that was how it was. I woke up and I'm like, okay, I could put tattoos on there, and I'm so glad I did because they just look finished. Awesome.

Jamie : 26:48

I love that. I I know people who just look in the mirror and they're like, Holy cow, you look amazing. Now, talk about body image because this can be very difficult for women, and whether it be with a dating scene or just looking at yourself in the mirror. But when you hear about women looking in the mirror after they have that final touch and feel like, wow, I really like my body right now, that's big. That's a big deal. And so thank you for sharing that. I just there's so much about you and your story that is so fascinating. And I just really appreciate your sharing all of the intimate details. And I know that we could probably have different episodes to go further into detail. I would like to wrap this up by talking about some of the resources that you've provided. You've provided your blog that will be in the show notes, which again, to my audience, you're not gonna want to not read this. It's actually very compelling and it's raw, it's real, and it is just important to read. But you also have some Instagram profiles that you put on there that I actually started following this morning that's very fascinating. You have Rethink Breast Cancer, Feminine Phenom, and Cancer Culture.

allison and jamie: 28:18

Yeah, and I think there was the youth survival, that was a website.

Jamie : 28:22

Youth survival.

allison and jamie: 28:23

Yeah, I was on this mission years ago to find resources for people who are younger. And so it was I was featured on the Youth Survivors Coalition. I have a profile and was featured on there with my story just because they had found it compelling as well, just the whole idea of being like so young and pregnant and going through all of those things. And I've kind of I've connected with people that way. The second one was at Phenom. Yeah, Phenom. I'm a feminine phenom. So we actually became buddies. I had reached out to her because she posts all like mastectomy photos, and she's in the gym and she's holding kids, and she's just a phenomenal person. And so we connected and talked a little bit about our stories and shared some information, and she's just a badass. If you look at her photos and you're just like, you know what? Like, she is unapologetically her, and she's inspirational to me. Like, she just doesn't care. She has accepted and embraced all that is her and her journey and her story. And so that is one that I would really like to get out there more to give her a little bit more publicity and press because I think that she is rewriting a narrative that is as women in society, like I said, we're very sexualized, breasts are sexualized. So many women will say they felt less of a woman or less of a person when they lost their breasts. And I would personally like to rewrite that narrative and say, Hell no, like whatever society is deeming as important, it's important what you feel, and your value is not going to be measured by the size. Of your breasts or having breasts there at all. Like you are a human being, damn it. And with breasts or not, you can still be a desirable, sexual, intellectual, loving, caring, compassionate human being. And so don't lean into that bullshit and give it more time and energy than it needs to have. Look at some of these people that are out there showcasing what their bodies look like. Like I was on one of the what magazine was it that I was in. It wasn't I Love Reno. My iHeart Reno, I had my blog was published in there, but there was a magazine that I did. What's the one with About Town Deb? What's it called? Her magazine that she has. Bliss Babe.

Jamie : 30:42

Bliss Babe. I think so. Yes. And I think I remember, I think you posted a picture or something. You posted something about that.

allison and jamie: 30:49

I think it's a black and white photo of me with the vasectomy in my pregnant body. That was important for me to put out there to say there are beauty can look however we want it to look and don't get sucked into this stereotypical idea of what we think beauty is. And that's been the fun part now about being in the dating scene and being willing to tell somebody, you have a problem with what my body looks like. That is not my problem. I value myself. And if you don't value my story or how I look or it makes you uncomfortable, you know, and granted, if I was in a really intimate, like committed relationship where I was moving forward with somebody for the rest of my life, like those conversations that you have are different. But it's just you get to a place of acceptance with yourself. And I would really like women to be able to get there and not buy into this, like I said, the stereotypical bullshit that their bodies and their breasts have to look a certain way.

Jamie : 31:40

Oh, right. The first time I remember my husband last summer, we were at Tahoe and we were paddleboarding and we got out of the paddle off the paddleboard and we ran into one of our friends. And he says, How are you guys doing? And I said, Well, you know, I just got found out I have breast cancer. And he says, Oh, oh, are you are you gonna lose your beautiful blonde hair? And then when you get boobies, are they gonna be bigger? Are you gonna and he's going like this with his hands? He's just these gestures. I'm like, whoa. And I actually have had a couple of people say, Oh, well, hey, at least you get new 20-year-old boobs and stuff like that. And I'm, but I don't want 20-year-old boobs. I don't want, I want my own boobs. I'm in love with my breasts. So just some of the things that people say that like you were talking about, you know, what society thinks that we should have, and as if, and assuming that I want to get a boob job, like I never wanted a boob job before. And this actually isn't a boob job. This is I had cancer, I have something in there like that was gonna kill me. And so I needed to get rid of that.

allison and jamie: 32:47

So it's just so funny when people say it is, and I chose to go to have my breasts smaller, like I had always been a full C cup. And for as small as my frame was, I always had very large breasts. And when I got to choose the second time around, that's when Dr. Janika was like, So you want to go the same size you were or one size bigger? And I'm like, actually, no, I want to go one size smaller. And he was like, Huh? I'm like, no, I want to be very they call it like the 300 club or whatever, where it's 300 cc's or something like where it's smaller. And because that to me is like more comfortable. That's where I feel the sexiest. That's where I feel like this is what my body like, this is if I get to choose, this is what I would choose to have my body look like. And I have never regretted it for a second of going smaller.

Jamie : 33:34

Good. You're a very confident, beautiful, beautiful person. And again, we met several years ago, and I just didn't know you well. And I remember everything I do remember of you was always amazing. But just learning more about your journey and how you've gotten through it and all of the things that came with it, with your relationship with your husband and friends, and your mom, and your dad, and your kids. I just feel very fortunate that you are on this episode. And I appreciate your leaving those resources and thank you for being out there to help other women and even other spouses to give advice on some of the things that they need to be doing while they're being your caregiver, especially with communication, because communication is just such an important part of it. So, well, thank you very much. And to my audience, I highly recommend you go into Allison's blog and read it. And I'm and did you end up putting it into a are you going to put it into a book? Or how are you gonna do that? Where is this gonna go? Are you gonna have a second part to this blog?

allison and jamie: 34:50

Yeah, it's there's something coming. It's definitely there's something manifesting out there. I'm just trying to figure out exactly what that is. You know, when I hit seven years out, another, so Marcel's mom, her name's Lisa Lagrone. She, I was talking to her about it and she's like, oh, seven, seven is like the year of completion. I was like seven years out from all of this. And that's when I stopped and I went, oh, like that is actually something really important to take into consideration because I felt this surge during year seven, and it's what's completing and also what's also building and re-beginning again, starting over, like rolling over and turning into something new. And so that blog is not done by any means. I just don't know what in the hell I'm gonna do with it, what I'm gonna do with it. Something is coming. And for anyone out there who is willing to read it, thank you so much. And just know that when you go into the link, it starts with the newest post versus the oldest. So start backwards at the earliest date because that builds the story that way. And that way it gives you an order of what was going on. But I'm just thankful for anyone who wants to read it. So thanks for giving that plug, Janie.

Jamie : 35:54

Yeah, and it's a good thing that you said that because I had to figure that out when I started reading it. Like, wait a minute, where's the beginning? No, I know. Thank you. Well, thank you so much, Allison, for interviewing with me. It has been such an honor and a privilege getting to know you better and your story better. You have just really given us such real talk about your breast cancer experience. And to my audience, I hope you've enjoyed, and I will see you next time on Test Those Breasts.