Words can’t do justice to how elated I felt when I received the call from Sibley Hospital that my biopsy was benign! I don’t have breast cancer! I don’t have to go through this all again! All is calm on the breastern front! A day after that call, I started taking a new cancer medication. […]
A year ago this week, I met Mr. Agency. A few days later, we grabbed drinks together. A year ago this week, Best Boy spent the night at my place for the first time ever and told me: You’ve gotten in my head. As July turned to August, I had two minor surgeries to remove […]
Every 30 seconds, someone in the United States is diagnosed with cancer. Last year, at age 37, I was one of those people. I needed a lumpectomy to remove the two cancerous areas in my right breast, six rounds of chemotherapy and 30 sessions of radiation. I knew that treatment would be tough, but I […]
When I went to the Infusion Room last month, the nurses all looked at me with surprise and excitement. Nurse: Your hair is growing so fast! Me: I know. Manager: It looks great. Me: Thanks! But, I’d rather be bald than have short hair. And, I honestly would. I appreciate that an overwhelming majority of […]
In late May, I started an oral medication, tamoxifen, to block the estrogen in my body in the hopes of preventing my cancer from returning. (Research has shown that tamoxifen is as helpful as chemotherapy in that regard.) On one full dose and four half doses over the course of five days, my body expressed […]
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 felt like a little girl in a grassy field, holding a daisy in her hand. I love him. I love him not. I really like him. I don’t know what I want. I felt like a woman of a certain age, sitting on a porch, fanning herself. I might love him. Ooh! I need […]
A part of me wondered if I should hang up the telephone, ending the unnecessary closure talk that I was having with Mr. Agency. But, I wasn't exactly thinking clearly by that point in my treatment. And, it also occurred to me that maybe…just maybe…one of us would say something that resonated in the right […]
As I had predicted, Mr. Agency called me three days after our text conversation. In those 72 hours, I didn't shed a tear over him or even give him much thought. I was feeling horribly from my fifth round of chemotherapy, and I had zero energy to give to a guy with whom I was […]
After Mr. Agency and I discussed what worked for both of us, I had thought that we had agreed to spend one night a week together. I didn’t realize until after we started tearing each other’s clothes off that one night a week didn’t involve him actually staying over my place. Since we had started […]