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Survivorship
The stories and experiences are written by people after cancer treatments. These stories are written for those learning how to get back to work, college or just trying to be themselves again. Just getting past treatments isn’t enough, it is surviving and thriving that is key to being you again.
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Things I Wish My Doctor Knew
I do not write this to assign blame. I write it because I survived — and survival has given me clarity. There are things I wish my doctor knew. I wish my doctor knew how to calculate my breast cancer risk accurately.
Read More...Words Matter
I wish my doctors knew how powerful their words can be. Whether it’s on a diagnosis day, during treatment, or after treatment, words matter. And they stay with us. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m worried,” my surgeon said after I got that dreaded x-ray of my shoulder in November 2018.
Read More...Five Lessons from a Survivor
Sometimes I wish I could have said the things I was screaming in my head or cried about on the inside, fearful to say out loud. As a master-trained healthcare administrator, adult caregiver, advocate for health equity, and a patient with various conditions, I am no stranger to interacting with doctors.
Read More...The Emotions of Cancer
Let’s begin by listing the emotions that I have experienced since diagnosis. Before diagnosis, I was a quiet girl, never said much, kept to myself. Upon diagnosis, I became scared, fearful and disenchanted with life and everyone around me.
Read More...Rebuilding Myself, Rebuilding Others
There’s a line by Taylor Swift that has stuck with me: “Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.” For me, that saddest story began in March of 2021, when a sudden pain in my right breast sent me to the doctor. I was 39, busy with work and raising two young girls, and my OBGYN thought it would be nothing more than a cyst.
Read More...Embracing Every Emotion: My Path as a Pediatric Survivor
A few weeks ago, I was talking to a cancer buddy, and he recommended I try to submit this article. I always felt like I couldn’t become friends with people from Elephants and Tea because I was so young with my cancer diagnosis.
Read More...My Invisible Illness
While it’s been 6 years since my emergency brain surgery and discovery of my rare brain tumor, whenever I unexpectedly hear the word cancer in the media or in a conversation nearby, I cringe. It’s a surreal reaction.
Read More...A Shadow of My Shadow
Sept. 30, 2020. 11:30 a.m. “It’s cancer” Death, For the last five years, I have thought about nothing but death, death, dying, the act of dying
Read More...Still Here (A Letter to Cancer)
Dear cancer, Your name and “dear” don’t belong together, I’m just being polite. You however, skipped the niceties altogether When you crept into my life
Read More...Dear Cancer, You Are Just a Chapter
You tried it. You came in loud, messy, and ruthless—thinking you could scare me into silence, into surrender. You thought the diagnosis was the end of the story. Plot twist: I’m still here.
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