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AYA Cancer
10 Years – Beauty for Ashes
My young life has been jam packed with hard lessons, but it is still hard to believe that it was ten years ago today when I first heard the words “you have cancer.” Those are impossibly tough words to hear no matter your age, but I felt as if my life that had just begun was suddenly being yanked away from me.
Read More...Supposed to Be My Year
2021 was supposed to be my year. Living in Los Angeles, I made it through 2020 relatively unscathed, with big plans for the year ahead. I was transferring within my job, moving across the country, and starting my life with the man I love.
Read More...Mama Tried
This letter is written to my sweet baby boy / Or would you have been a girl? / Honestly it doesn’t matter, I would have loved you either way / I would have loved every inch of you / From the top of your curly brown hair / Down to the bottom of your little brown feet
Read More...Happily Ever After
Happily ever after. Driving off into the sunset, hair streaming in the wind, typically with the love of your life seated next to you. Sound familiar? I know it’s not true. But at every such cliché ending, I find a smile on my face.
Read More...No Fear
There’s a tattoo inscribed on my side. / It has today’s date -September 14th / 2001 / Twenty years ago. / Underneath the date are two words written in beautiful cursive / No. Fear. / I don’t know why I followed that date with that phrase.
Read More...Grief Finds Me in Different Ways Daily
Grief Finds Me in Different Ways Daily. In the beginning, it found me as I was grieving the future I had dreamed of – a family with two or more kids and what our shiny life would be like. See, I lost my fertility right after my cancer diagnosis.
Read More...Me Then You
9/6/80. How many times have you been asked for your date of birth, like it’s a code to another level, a password at a locked door? Doctors, nurses, surgeons, pharmacists need this information before they can do their job, which is to take care of you.
Read More...Cancer and Weight
I struggled with body image my entire life. My ‘goal’ figure undoubtedly came from cultural standards, growing up during heroin chic’s heyday in the ‘90s. That goal was similarly praised by my white, middle class family, even if that enforcement went mostly unacknowledged by them.
Read More...Apology from a Bridge
I glanced at the text. The words “liver”, “enzyme” and “scans” popped out at me, and I wondered what they meant. In a nanosecond I thought back to my Thursday blood draw where my oncologist told me that my liver enzyme results had not come back yet.
Read More...Sorry, I Can’t Talk Right Now, I’m Grieving…
On June 2nd, 2020, I received my cancer diagnosis. I have stage IV, high grade pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer. From that day on it was time to say goodbye to my old life, and start my new life with a cancer I had never even heard of.
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