It Was Always When, Never If ~ Andy's Story 💪
💕 Andy Kahle was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, weeks after buying her first drag racing car and starting work toward her licence. She shares how holding onto one very specific goal carried her through treatment, and how that same car eventually became Therapy on Wheels. We are delighted that Andy has offered to share her inspiring story with our community 💕 I was in the shower on an ordinary Wednesday night when I felt it. Dishes done, Mick (my hubby) stretched out on the couch watching the news, the dogs under the dining table dreaming about leftovers they weren't getting. Then, a lump. Within a few weeks I was sitting across from my GP hearing him say the words out loud. "Andy, you have breast cancer." What followed was a double mastectomy with reconstruction, a full hysterectomy, chemo aggressive enough that it had only just come off trial, radiation over Christmas, and a decade of medication after that. I'm not going to dwell on all of it here, because that's not actually what this story is about. Before any of this started, Mick and I had bought an 8-second drag racing Torana. I was learning to drive it, working toward my racing licence, and I wanted it so badly I could taste it. We'd spent months practising the start procedure and the burnout and the launch in a mate's carpark, getting ready for my first real day at the track. Diagnosis didn't take that want away from me. If anything, it's the only thing that got me through what came next. I decided, somewhere very early on, that beating this wasn't going to be my finish line. My actual finish line was going to be an actual finish line, a quarter mile of it, at the track. On my good days, when I could barely manage it, I'd go and sit in the car out in the workshop. Not driving anywhere. Just sitting there breathing in the fuel and rubber smell, hands on the wheel, letting it remind me who I still was underneath all of it. I stuck photos of the Torana in the front of my hospital diary and showed them to every doctor, every nurse, every roommate who'd look. Not to make a point to anyone else. Just so the dream stayed real to me, on the days it would have been so easy to let it go. It was never "if" in my head. It was always "when." That "when" is what got me out of bed on the days people told me I didn't have to. It's what had Mick setting up a treadmill in the living room, right by the front window, so I could still walk without leaving the house when my immune system was too shot to go anywhere near a gym. It's what dragged me to actual rehab once treatment was winding down, doing embarrassingly small workouts. Some days my big win was lasting a whole minute on the cross trainer, then needing another whole minute just to find the energy to climb off the thing. It didn't matter how small the win was. Every single one of them was a step closer to that car. Wanting to survive was never quite enough on its own t…77ViewsSign in to react to this post0Comments
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