Patient

Negative Results

It hasn’t killed me yet—
but it spreads.
From marrow to memory,
it seeds the femur,
threads the ribs,
scrapes its code into the curve
of my pelvis—
then metastasizes
to the contact list.

Remodeling My Emotional Kitchen: Healing Through Cancer

Cancer changed my relationships with others by forcing me to face and process my trauma. Eve Ensler, the playwright of The Vagina Monologues and a cancer survivor herself, reported that she survived cancer by confronting her trauma, along with making lifestyle changes and using traditional Western medicine.

Why Not You?

For some people, when they experience a particularly arduous time in life, or when they are dealt a bad hand, so many think “Why me?” “Why did this awful thing happen to me? Why do I have to deal with this hardship? I think this can be traced to the age-old question “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Dancing Through the Rain with Cancer

Words painted on the wall of my first infusion center. I never imagined how much power and importance these words would have in my life that first day I sat in an infusion chair for my eight-hour long infusion of alpha interferon, intron A.

The Adulting You Can’t See

There always seems to be a buzzword for a time period in one’s life that sticks. The current word is “adulting”. It’s the word that doesn’t need explaining and represents more than the word itself.

War With Cancer

Brain cancer kills. It kills in just more than one way. It slowly started to kill me in 2019. It gave me a glimpse of Death, face to face with his beckoning eyes. He was elated that he could inscribe my name in his book of souls.

Anxiety Stream

There’s a lyric from Snoh Aalegra’s song “Violet Skies” that goes “I’ve always been a worrier, but I’ll always be a warrior”. For some reason, that lyric stuck with me when I started my cancer journey.

Adulting is Bananas

The light of the refrigerator blinded me. I was confused as to why it was so dark; I had just awakened from a nap. A nap that I had not planned. Sleep sometimes attacks me; I call them sleep attacks.

To you baba, I live

When my father was diagnosed with lung cancer, I knew I would also fall sick, very soon. Six months later, I started feeling a growing lump but thought that maybe it’s some sort of hormonal change.

Dear Younger Self

Younger Brooke,

Hi love, it’s you… future you. I wanted you to know that on October 26th, 2024– you will get a phone call that wakes you up.