My Journey with Inflammatory Breast Cancer: Intellectual Mafia Reunion

In high school I had a group of girlfriends that was nicknamed the "Intellectual Mafia" by our American History professor. They were all the presidents, captains, and leaders of the school. They also happened to be beautiful and a ton of fun. We studied hard for our AP tests and played hard with weekends spent at the beach. Since high school they have all gone on to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, lobbyists...you get the idea. Every one of them have or are currently getting at least one graduate degree. Brad always has to remind me that even though these girls make me feel “normal”, we are not indeed “normal”.

Back in the spring I started planning a surprise birthday for my best friend Sabrina. The idea was all the girls would fly in for a weekend while Sabrina just thought it would be her coming into town. After I got cancer, Sabrina started trying to plan a surprise birthday party for me. Every time I tried to call the other girls and talk to them about a surprise for Sabrina they were surprisingly non-committal and lukewarm about it - turns out they were giving the same reception to Sabrina since no one wanted to ruin anyone's surprise plans. Brad had to finally break it to us that we were both trying to plan each other's surprise party for the same weekend. Many of the girls had already bought tickets for the weekend so we decided to have a 30^th birthday party for everyone!

I made everyone gift baskets and picked out a scarf that matched each girls' personality. It was super fun putting these together!

Sabrina came in a day early and painted my entire kitchen/nook. Impressive, right?

Thanks Sabrina!

The weekend was a blast. It is really special to stay in touch with this many girls for over 15 years now. (Two additional girls visited me other weekends this month.) We have gotten together 1-2 times every year since high school. The majority of the weekend was spent hanging out around the house doing a whole lot of nothing. The girls were really helpful with Noah and David, dishes, etc., so it made hosting them a breeze.