Hey Y’all,

I’m Birdy, aka Hayley, I am 28 years old and was born and raised in Calgary, AB and surrounding area. I come from an extremely large but wonderful family of 6 sisters and 4 brothers. Yes, I know, my “poor dad”, but truth be told, there’s 3 sets of parents that conceived us 11 children, so hold back judgement, for now anyway.

Let me take you back a few years, so you can get a clearer picture of where I am today. My father and mother were only together for a few years after my twin sisters and I’s debut into the world. We share the same mother and father(duh), but our other siblings do not.

Anyway, my father’s sister Shirley had been battling Ovarian and Breast Cancer for years before it metastasized and eventually took her life in June 2015. From there Jesse and I harassed our father to go get his testing for the BRCA Gene as we knew Shirley was a positive carrier. You’re probably thinking, “Why did you have to harass your father, he should have gone no questions asked”, I also felt and thought this way but if you know my father, you know he’s a stubborn ass and walks to the beat of his own drum (I get it from him). Now, in Canada you can only get tested for the gene if your parents or a sibling tests positive (such BS, I know), and with the scumbag insurance companies out there, you also will get denied life insurance if you test positive (so get life insurance before you get tested). With my father being in his early 50’s getting life insurance was not the easiest, but once he got it, he went and got tested right away. He tested positive.

I went and had my testing done in June 2015. I got the call on October 3 2015 (on my way to a job interview of all things) and was told the devastating news. I was positive for the BRCA 1 Gene Mutation and the Genetic Team wanted to know if I was still onboard for a double mastectomy. I was a disaster after this, I drove to my best friend Kassandra’s and she did what all women do best, she took me for Froyo (ride or die for life this girl). The next step for me, was a shit ton of doctor’s appointments, specialists, therapy and then meeting with my surgeons. I was told I would probably wait a good year before anything happened. Wrong! My surgery was booked for March 31, 2016.

December rolls around and I decided I wanted to have an amazing Christmas with my family, my diagnosis made me realize how important family truly is and to try and get everyone into the same place at once for a real Christmas hoorah! It was a success, but then the New Year rolled in, I had just started a new job at this company, knowing I had this surgery coming up (I didn’t tell them of course, duh, nobody hires you in Calgary if they know you need time off) and I started to stress out. My relationship of 3 years was literally holding together by threads and I wasn’t sure if we would make it to my surgery. Let me tell you, a woman intuition is bomb, LISTEN TO IT, I can guarantee you, it’s always right. So, if you can’t guess what’s coming next then you should just go away now, because this is the biggest cliff hanger…. just kidding it’s not… we broke up. It was awful and I won’t go into details but it happened. Then to make matters worse, I lose my job. Told them I needed 3-6 weeks for recovery and bam, whose let go?? MEEEEEEEE. To make matters even better, my surgery got post-poned till May 2, 2016.

Here I am, unemployed, single and trying to find a new place to live so I can recover properly. Could matters get any worse…. Yea they can. But I’ll save that for my blogs to come.

This was just a small taste of what 2016 brought to my more than eventful life. If you want to hear the rest, follow my blog, I promise you, it only gets juicer.

Much love,

Birdie