NATCHEZ — Loree McCall wasn’t much different than most moms — busy.

With a family, two children, a full-time job, school obligations and functions and church activities, McCall said her life was moving fast.

But in 2004, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, McCall’s life slowed down.

She was sipping coffee before church and her son, Creighton, then a third-grader, crawled in her lap, needing a little extra snoozing time before getting ready for church.

“He was trying to get situated in my lap and elbowed me here,” she said clutching her under her right arm. “It hurt, so I was just going to rub it a little.”

Just rubbing away a little pain, McCall never expected to find a walnut sized lump in her breast.

“I went to the bathroom and just screamed for my husband,” McCall said. “We went to church that morning, and I went to the altar to have my pastor pray for me and just broke down.”

She took the next available appointment with her doctor, had a biopsy and then began the waiting game, thinking the whole time about her husband James and children Charlie Kae and Creighton.

“It was a whole week before I found out anything,” McCall said. “It felt like the lump was the only of topic conversation over Thanksgiving. Everyone was telling me that so and so had this and it was benign. I had basically convinced myself that my lump was the same.”

She was so confident, in fact, that the day of the biopsy results, she told her husband she would be fine at the doctor visit alone.

“I told him ‘This is what they are going to tell me, and I’ll set up the appointment to have it removed and you can go then,’” McCall remembers. “The first thing the doctor asked me was ‘Did anyone come with you?’”

It only took that one question for McCall to know the biopsy results. She had breast cancer. She was the first person in her family to be diagnosed with cancer.

“I just shook,” she said. “My head was in a tilt-a-whirl. I heard the doctor talking but I wasn’t listening to anything.”

What followed was the initial lumpectomy, chemotherapy, radiation treatments and a dozen more surgeries. She had seven more lumps removed, all of which were benign, back and neck surgeries and a hysterectomy.

“Chemo is hard on your body,” she said. “It makes your bones brittle. You can’t eat anything without being sick; you can’t smell anything without being sick; you can’t sleep; you basically can’t be comfortable.”

McCall remembers one night, after being awake for 72 hours, feeling so sick at her stomach she was sure she was going throw up.

“I went to the bathroom and just sat there waiting,” she said. “I was so sick, but so tired, that I pulled a towel out of the closet and propped up on it like a pillow. I slept on the bathroom floor all night.

“When my husband found me the next day he thought I was dead and screamed ‘Loree!’ All I thought was ‘Why did you wake me up?’”

But McCall wasn’t along for the ride alone. She had her family, a large extended family, her church family and most importantly, God.

“I don’t know how someone could get through something like this without God,” she said. “There were many times I was feeling so sorry for myself, but God always picked me up.”

McCall was leaving a chemo treatment one morning when a woman stopped her. The woman told her that her mother was at the office receiving chemo for breast cancer and she had just been diagnosed with cancer herself. McCall said she sort of brushed the woman off, offering a simple apology but God wouldn’t let her get away with that.

“When I got back to the car, I could just feel Him telling me to go back and talk to that woman,” McCall said.

And she did.

“I told her what had really sustained me was having a good church home that I knew was praying for me,” McCall said. “I told her to find a church, too.”

McCall went back to her car and realized she should have gotten the woman’s phone number to check on her later.

“I went back into the office and told the receptionist I wanted to talk to that woman and get her phone number,” McCall said. “The receptionist said ‘Loree, you were the last patient. There isn’t anyone else back there.’

“God put that angel there to teach me that someone is always worse off than you.”

But it still wasn’t easy.

“If I had a worst enemy, I’d never wish this on them,” she said.

She still felt hopeless and lost sometimes. With the busy Christmas season going full force, McCall remembers thinking each time she did something, it was for the last time.

She didn’t believe she’d see her children graduate from high school and college or watch them get married.

She worried about how her children would get to school and church activities.

She worried about her teenage daughter having to grow up without a mother.

“I wasn’t worried about leaving this world,” she said. “I felt comfortable as a Christian. I just wasn’t ready to leave this world.”

But she finally got peace — at K-Mart.

She was shopping with her daughter for Christmas goodies for Charlie Kae’s friends. She was trying to stay emotionally strong, but was breaking down because she just knew it was the last time she’d shop for Christmas.

“I started praying for strength and peace,” McCall said. “I told God I needed a sign, I needed to know He was there.”

She continued shopping and waiting for the sign.

Looking at gift wrap, she heard it.

“He said ‘My child, I am with you,’” she said.

The voice sounded like it came over the store intercom, but the message was just for McCall.

“After that point, I changed,” she said. “I knew he was with me. I knew I was going to be OK. I could finally tell people I was going to be OK and believe it.”

Six months later, in June 2005, McCall was told she was in remission.

She was changed, in a good way, because of her struggle with breast cancer.

She no longer moves so fast. She takes time to appreciate things, to appreciate her husband and children. She takes time to enjoy milestones and holidays more.

“I saw my daughter graduate from high school, and my son is now a sophomore in high school,” she said. “I moved my daughter into her college dorm room and spent three days getting things just right for her.”

McCall is now more patient, more understanding and more compassionate, she said.

McCall now understands why God allowed her to have breast cancer.

“I don’t think I’ll ever say I’m glad I had breast cancer, but God had to take me down to be able to bring me back up.”