Found out I’m in remission, but I’m not that happy. When I saw those words appear in my Twitter feed, I immediately replied to my friend: I’m grateful that you are done with treatment, but I get it. Call me if you want. Love you! My telephone rang one minute later. We talked about how […]
If a person is diagnosed with breast cancer, a doctor runs tests on the cancer cells to determine if they are: 1. Estrogen receptor positive; 2. Progesterone receptor positive; and 3. HER2/neu positive. What does that even mean? Well, for the first two, do estrogen and progesterone (hormones that naturally occur in the body) cause […]
I finished radiation yesterday. I thought that I would be elated, but I’m honestly in too much pain and too exhausted to rejoice right now. I hope that this post helps to clarify why I haven’t been blogging as often as I normally do, and why the end of treatment isn't all jubilation for me. […]
She dresses in layers on a bitterly cold morning in January, as she heads for the doctor’s office for her last round of chemotherapy. Her eye twitches from three months without enough sleep. Her pale face turns beat red with every hot flash. She’s crabby from all the steroids. Her taste buds are almost completely […]
She feels like she’s looking through a kaleidoscope, only no turn of the wheel ends up on a pretty picture. No flowers. No butterflies. No vistas resembling a peacock’s plume. “We can’t give you the easier chemo,” her oncologist says as tears stream down her face. “Why am I finding this out now? Why did […]