The life I had been through no woman would wish to have for her life. One day in the afternoon, the phone rang, I heard the word “breast cancer.” the death sentence ran into my head, like my time on the earth would be the end. I panicked and struggled to find the right words or questions, but then the doctor said, “Don’t worry,” and slowly explained, “We won’t know the details until a tissue sample is sent to the laboratory for testing. That comes after surgery. You need to wait until Monday, someone will call you to schedule for surgery.” Still in shock, I politely said, “Okay,” and just hung up. I ran into my bedroom, sat in the chair where my husband often sat on and put his shoes on every morning. I was thinking a million things in my mind, “Should I call my husband? What should I tell him? Will my children live without their mom?” I wanted to cry hard and scream out loud but I couldn’t do it. My heart jumped fast and faster for minutes before I picked up the phone to call my husband. “Honey, I have breast cancer,” I said. He said, “What? Where are you? I’ll be right there.” When he got home he held me tight and neither of us said a word for a while in my bedroom. At that moment, I just wanted to be with him and my children. I wanted nothing else in this world.
Khanh Walkup came to the U.S in 1996 from Vietnam. While she was a student at Mission College in Santa Clara, she met Richard Walkup and married him in 1998. She has two children, a girl and a boy. She is busy with her children and continuing her education at SJSU as a finance major.
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