When I look back on the past six years, for me, Coronado is a place of healing.
Growing up in Tucson, Arizona, there weren’t many summer vacations that didn’t include a trip to San Diego.
My father was a civil and structural engineer who received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at New Mexico State University, where he met my mother, a Kansas-born, U.S. Air Force brat, pursuing similar degrees in education.
For my father, nothing screamed vacation more than walking on a beach, watching his children carefree, running and playing in the water like he did as a boy growing up in India.
My early adulthood was spent raising my family in Los Angeles.
From my experience, L.A. people didn’t get the hype around San Diego.
My husband grew up in the Los Angeles area, going to Zuma in Malibu, and he couldn’t understand why I was obsessed with San Diego.
In 2015, my husband had a speaking engagement at the Hotel del Coronado, which overlapped our May 3, wedding anniversary. Although he had traveled to San Diego more times than I could count with his work in Major League Baseball, he had never stayed or spent any downtime on the island.
“Now I get it.”
We took a long walk, and after that first day, I’ll never forget when he turned to me and said, “Now, I get it.”
We closed on a home purchase in the spring of 2016, which was under construction, but before we would move in late summer of that year, I found a lump on one of my breasts and was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer.
How could 46-year-old healthy me have such an aggressive form of cancer?
The initial shock and disbelief gave way to paralyzing fear and mourning.
Coronado became refuge
I began treatment in August, and our beach house and Coronado became my refuge from chemotherapy.
I’ll never forget walking into the barber shop on Orange Avenue and asking to have my head shaved.
“You have beautiful hair. Are you sure?” said the woman when I sat down in the chair.
I choked back tears explaining that it was already starting to fall out in handfuls. It was just hair, but without it, not even my smile could hide from the world that chemotherapy was ravaging through the cancer and the heathy cells in my body.
We tried to visit Coronado monthly for the next year and a half of treatment (chemo, recovery from surgery, radiation, more chemo in the form of pills) and then as often as we could during the three years of a clinical trial for a potential TNBC vaccine.
You could find me in a baseball cap walking the island with my husband, watching my labs chase each other up and down Dog Beach, or planted on the sand sending prayers of gratitude for the majestic Pacific Ocean and the joy of living another day in this amazing world.
Daily miracles
In those moments, Coronado had reminded me that not even cancer could take away God’s daily miracles.
Through physical pain and mental anguish of cancer treatment, Coronado was goodness.
The island was and continues to be a place where my family shares our most meaningful time together.
No matter how long we are away, our permanent-resident neighbors warmly welcome us home.
Our military neighbors and their service and sacrifice touches our hearts.
The kindness of strangers, whether residents or visitors, is limitless. And the splendor of the landscape leaves us speechless every single visit.
Amy Hall is an editorial board member for The Coronado News. While a resident of Arizona, Hall first fell in love with San Diego while vacationing during her childhood. She now enjoys spending free time at her part-time home in Coronado with her husband, three adult children and two labs.
