January, 18th 2025: Join us for food, drinks, dancing, and author sharing — all to support our mission. Learn more here!
Survivorship
More Than a Cough
When people talk about cancer and treatment, they prepare you for the big things, hair loss, fatigue, nausea, surgeries, scars. And I had all of that. But no one warned me about the cough.
Read More...The Untold Chapter of Cancer Survivorship
Being on the other side of a cancer diagnosis changed everything I thought I knew. Before being diagnosed with Peritoneal Mesothelioma, survivorship would start when the treatment ended.
Read More...What Lies Beneath
Physically, I’m okay. Scans are clear. Labs are clear. Doctor appointments get pushed back to every six months, sometimes even yearly. The unsettling feeling still creeps in on the first of every month—checking my breasts diligently, holding my breath, and for a split second, seeing a lump as big as before.
Read More...The People I Lost, the Self I Found
Hi herd, hope you all are well. I am writing again to talk about the one lesson that cancer has taught me today. Do you know what that is? It is people.
Read More...Move Over Deet
In late winter / early spring of 2016, at the age of 35, I was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer. This, along with the surgery and 12 rounds of a chemotherapy called FOLFOX were a complete surprise.
Read More...The Reverse Mullet Undercut
My hair was my thing. Long, luscious, naturally straight, and easy to style. All my life I really took it for granted how beautiful and effortless it was.
Read More...Perpetually Healing
For me, side effects are just that, to the side of it all. Brain cancer wrecked my body. From night one in the ICU until I was transferred to inpatient rehab 7 weeks later, everything from daily hygiene, dressing, eating, were all done for me.
Read More...A Farewell to Pregnancy
“There are many ways to be a mother.” My doctor is sitting across from me, his eyes looking directly into mine. I am in an exam room with my husband and sister.
Read More...My Bones Ache
My bones ache, My muscles burn, An unusual hurt, Now, an ordinary burden. My brain zaps, My body weak, I can’t go onIt makes me weep.
Read More...Permission Slip
Immature. Iconic. Classic. If you grew up when I did, those three words easily describe Blink-182. And if you had told my younger self that Blink-182 would one day help me process cancer survivorship, I would have laughed in your face—because 1) that seemed incredibly unlikely, and 2) surely I’d be quite elderly if/when I got cancer.
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