cancer survivor

Ode to H.E.R. (Holding Every Reality)

It feels like it took a lifetime to find you… this body of mine. All her shapes, curves, and ombre moods of brown.

I was sort of lost without understanding how powerful you are, so I’ve fought hard for you to stay.

Internal and External Scars

I am two years into cancer
Or rather –
Cancer is two years into me –
and my body is Scarred.
No,
Not just where they sliced open my neck and removed the cancer
(twice).
No,
not just where they implanted a port into the middle of my chest,
just below my once-cushioned
(now-protruding)
collar bone.
No,
Scar tissue is
where my heart is
and
Scar tissue is
where my words are
and
Scar tissue has taken over
the Happiness Center in my brain.

Cancer Treatment Doesn’t End After Chemotherapy

It was March 3, 2022 and I was checking my online chart to see what was going on with me.

I went through a sonogram, a biopsy, and various other blood tests to check out the large growth on my neck. “The immunophenotypic features of the large, atypical cells are consistent with the diagnosis of classic Hodgkin lymphoma,” the words hit me like a train running me over at 100 miles an hour.

Alive and Scarred

Scars – by definition, are “marks left on the skin or within body tissue where a wound, burn or sore has not healed completely and fibrous connective tissue has developed. A lasting effect of grief, fear, or other emotion left on a person’s character by a traumatic experience. A mark left on something following damage of some kind.” 

Dear Cancer, Keep Your Distance

Hey Cancer,
I can see you looking at me.
Stay back, across the street, stay steady.
It’s been two years.

I still feel you crawling under my skin
after kicking you out of me.

When Life Gives You Scars

In this blog teenage cancer survivor, author and speaker Mette de Fine Licht shares her thoughts about getting over cancer. The illness has left her with a big scar on her right leg. Not to mention the mental scars from long lonely days at the hospital.