Survivorship
The stories and experiences are written by people after cancer treatments. These stories are written for those learning how to get back to work, college or just trying to be themselves again. Just getting past treatments isn’t enough, it is surviving and thriving that is key to being you again.
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It Never Ends
Life recently has been non-cancer focused, for once! I recently took a new position in my company, finally moved away from the hospital and city I was sick in and am generally doing healthy young adult things. Record scratching screeching stop.
Read More...Thanks for Changing Me
“Code Blue, ninth floor, room 20.” Those are words I never heard in the hospital, because I was in room 20 in cardiac arrest. It is always terrifying hearing color codes being called on the PA system, but a Code Blue makes your heart sink.
Read More...10 Years – Beauty for Ashes
My young life has been jam packed with hard lessons, but it is still hard to believe that it was ten years ago today when I first heard the words “you have cancer.” Those are impossibly tough words to hear no matter your age, but I felt as if my life that had just begun was suddenly being yanked away from me.
Read More...Supposed to Be My Year
2021 was supposed to be my year. Living in Los Angeles, I made it through 2020 relatively unscathed, with big plans for the year ahead. I was transferring within my job, moving across the country, and starting my life with the man I love.
Read More...Happily Ever After
Happily ever after. Driving off into the sunset, hair streaming in the wind, typically with the love of your life seated next to you. Sound familiar? I know it’s not true. But at every such cliché ending, I find a smile on my face.
Read More...No Fear
There’s a tattoo inscribed on my side. / It has today’s date -September 14th / 2001 / Twenty years ago. / Underneath the date are two words written in beautiful cursive / No. Fear. / I don’t know why I followed that date with that phrase.
Read More...Grief Finds Me in Different Ways Daily
Grief Finds Me in Different Ways Daily. In the beginning, it found me as I was grieving the future I had dreamed of – a family with two or more kids and what our shiny life would be like. See, I lost my fertility right after my cancer diagnosis.
Read More...Me Then You
9/6/80. How many times have you been asked for your date of birth, like it’s a code to another level, a password at a locked door? Doctors, nurses, surgeons, pharmacists need this information before they can do their job, which is to take care of you.
Read More...Cancer and Weight
I struggled with body image my entire life. My ‘goal’ figure undoubtedly came from cultural standards, growing up during heroin chic’s heyday in the ‘90s. That goal was similarly praised by my white, middle class family, even if that enforcement went mostly unacknowledged by them.
Read More...G-R-I-E-F
What does this simple but devastating five letter word really mean? Grief: does it mean to mourn or cry, or simply miss someone dear to you? Grief can be described as a lot of things to many different people, but it is never an easy word to swallow.
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