The cliché: You only live once. We hear it all the time. Mindlessly in one ear, out the other. Maybe you are thinking about whether or not to splurge on a piece of furniture. Perhaps contemplating taking a hooky day from work. But what if you really stopped to think about this concept? Stop. Think….
Eve
I can’t really explain it. I have ideas for blog posts often, but most of the time they sort of float around my consciousness like wayward balloons and, eventually, float away. Every once in a while a thought will appear and it feels urgent. Like I can’t open my laptop fast enough to start writing….
Gratefulness From the Afflicted
Top Ten Things to Be Grateful For From The Perspective of a Chronically Ill Person *Disclaimer: Cancer, even when considered curable, is a chronic disease. I am considered No Evidence of Disease (NED), which is as close to cured as a cancery person will ever be. That being said, I have now had the same…
Post-Op
Going to keep this succinct ’cause A) I’m exhausted B) I’m on drugs and C) I can’t sit up to type on the computer, so I’m writing this on my phone. I wasn’t nervous before surgery until the anesthesiologist came in. He talked about the intubation tube that would be down my throat to keep…
Vestigial
In a few days, I will be down either 4 or 6 organs, depending on how you look at it. I will be having a Salpingo-Oopherectomy & Hysterectomy. This means I will be having my ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus and cervix surgically removed from my body by a Gynecological Oncologist. I will break down the…
The Audacity
Well, it has been a while since I have taken pen to paper (fingies to keys). I have thought about writing a million times, but found myself thinking, but I have already said this when I had cancer the last time. When you zoom out, the overarching feelings of each cancer odyssey are very similar….
The Update
I realize it has been a while since I posted an update. Silence doesn’t mean much in Grancertown, it merely means I have lacked inspiration to write anything. But I do have some updates to share. In the weeks since chemo ended I have waited for my body to make some kind of miraculous change…
Chemommencement
Greetings and welcome to the Chemotherapy Graduating Class of July 21, 2022 (me, I am talking to just me). What an odyssey we have been through to get to this day, the day we look chemo in the eye and wave a hearty goodbye. It is important to take a look back at where we…
The Anti-Psychotic
These days it is becoming harder to distinguish between feeling exhausted and feeling depressed. The truth is I am probably both, and one is feeding into the other like the chicken and the egg. I was re-diagnosed in December of 2021. This incarnation of my disease has spanned 2 years and 3 seasons and I…
Wah-mbulance
It has been a while since I complained, and I am basically spilling over with contempt, so buckle up buttercups. Let’s start with the elephant in the room. Chemo. I have been getting chemotherapy for just over 20 weeks at this point. The staff at the cancer center all know me and when I don’t…
Grace+Cancer+Covid = Grancvid
Pop. Six. Squish. I can hear Velma Kelly singing “she had it coming.” Well folks, I finally got Covid. I had a good run. 2.5 years of evading the enemy. 18 of those months were spent in an elementary school surrounded by the germiest of the germies, grade school kids, and I still never got…
The Good Place
I think we can all agree that things have been pretty bleak in our world recently. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, Uvalde, the oncoming attack on women’s reproductive rights and so much more make for a depressing nonstop news cycle. I do my best to separate myself from these large and looming issues, as I…
Wormhole
Living in Cancertown brings with it some of the oddest realities. The way you existed and understood everyday life is blown to smithereens. What is up is now down, what is red is blue. No one really ever talks about these changes. You are expected to encounter them and simply get on board. Example 1:…
The Cancer 15
Name a woman who doesn’t have a complicated relationship with her body. I’ll wait. It all started when I was a chubby little girl. My dad referred to me, in his speech at my wedding, as a “cherubic” child. I remember listening to my pediatrician say that if my parents didn’t get me involved in…
Birthday
Today is my 42nd birthday. Important to know that historically, my birthday is my favorite holiday. I realize it hasn’t been nationally recognized, but I do consider my birthday a holiday, as I think everyone should. I really love the pomp and circumstance that I basically demand around my birthday. This started when I was…
Tax(ol) Day
‘Twas the night before new chemo and all through the house, I can’t think of a rhyme, cancer sucks. Tomorrow I start a new chemo called Taxol. Supposedly it is much more palatable than the chemo I was on before. The main side effects listed are distal neuropathy (permanent numbness in fingers and toes), exhaustion…
Ativan-cements
As I have finished 3/4 of the extra-evil part of my chemo regime, I feel confident giving it a rating of 0 out of 5 stars and a solid 1/10. I am willing to give it a 1 instead of a zero because it is ostensibly ridding me of cancer which deserves a point. As…
Babes in Cancerland
I have been thinking about writing this post for a while now, but dreading it because the reality is too harsh. I think it is time to talk about my kids and how they are handling Greg & Co. We have three kids ages 13, 11 and 8. 7th, 6th and 2nd grade. I am…
Cancer’s Hottest Club
If we consider chemo-day day 1, then my last post was on day 4. On day 5, I was scheduled to have hydration therapy at 3pm. Hydration therapy is where you have your port accessed at the cancer center and they dump IV fluids into you to make you feel partly human. By 7:30am on…
Sleep Through This
Day 1: My friend Lesley took me to my first chemo. It took forever for the pre-party to finish. The pre-party consists of them accessing your port, waiting for blood results to make sure you are fit for chemo, then drips of 2 anti-nausea meds, a bag of roids and a bag of Ativan which…
And So It Begins
I found out around 4:30pm today, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, that I will start chemo on Thursday, March 3 at 8am. The chemo I will be getting is 4 cycles of Adriamycin & Cytoxan 2 weeks apart and then 12 weeks of weekly Taxol. Thats 20 weeks y’all. And that is if everything goes off…
’24’ Hours in a Day
We are scheduled to go to California for Spring Break March 18, but I just felt in my bones that I would need chemo and not be able to go. Because of that feeling, I had been thinking about booking a last minute trip to NYC over President’s Day Weekend. Joe couldn’t get out of…
The Healthiest Sick Person
I can’t even begin to tell you how incredibly odd my life is right now. I have healed from 2 back-to-back surgeries really well and really quickly which I am going to attribute to the fact that I went into this ordeal physically strong. At my surgical follow-up appointment last week, my surgeon cleared me…
Oncotype
Okay, this post is mostly just for me, to try to organize my own thoughts. Very self-serving, but figured I would take you along for the ride. It is going to be confusing AF so buckle up. The next step in my odyssey is deciding if I would benefit from chemotherapy. This is a very…
Clean Margins
When my surgeon called to say that the surgical margins were clean she sounded so relieved. She admitted that she had been holding her breath. Same girl. I have started and re-started this sentence many times because it is hard to make anything in this cancery odyssey finite, but I should be done with cancer…
SCANS spelled backwards is SNACS
To clarify, scans for disease neither involve actual snacks nor do they qualify as what Gen Z would call snacks. I have had 4 scans for Greg & Co. in the last 4 weeks. In this post, I will be listing them from best to worst in listicle form. Everything described below is opinion. No…
When the Air Leaves the Room
This will be a two-part post. This part is being written on Monday, January 17 in the evening. Tomorrow I have a PET scan to see if my cancer has metastasized. The fact that I am even getting a PET scan is an ominous sign. It means there is a chance I have a terminal…
My Gregtopus Teacher
This title is a very deep cut. In order to understand it, you need to be aware of the 2020 BAFTA and Academy Award winning documentary, My Octopus Teacher, which is about a man who befriends a deep-sea octopus and of course, my tumor Cousin Greg. The title’s true meaning will become crystal clear a…
Fiesta Non Grata
Right now my sister and I were supposed to be on a plane headed to Cancun. I had booked us first class as a special treat (Jennie will be finding this out as she edits this post). We were going to celebrate her schmiftieth birthday. we were set to stay at this super bougie vegan…
Good at This
T minus 18 hours until Greg is sent to tumor heaven. I have been in quarantine in my bedroom for about 60 hours since my pre-op Covid test (which is negative!). Here is a short rundown of what I have been doing, with corresponding embarrassment levels 1-10; 1 being not embarrassing at all and 10…
The Gregercoaster
Setting the scene: ~You find out you have a Greg in your chest on December 22nd, but knew on the 16th that there was a strong possibility of cancer. Your breasts were last checked as clean on August 22 so Greg has appeared and/or grown big enough to be detected in 4 months. You do…
Twenty Twenty Two-mer
I have lost the ability to see things in terms of years. When you are cancery, or perhaps when you are walking through any difficult patch of life, time is not measured in long swaths. It is measured in, ‘bitch, am I going to make it through the next hour?!’ 2016 taught me many things,…
AGAIN
Christmas, 2021. At the age of 41, I was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time (pause for hysterical laughter–she’s kidding right?) Two weeks ago, I saw my oncologist for a regular appointment. She did an exam, as she always does. She found a lump on my cancerous side. I had an ultrasound the…
Our Renaissance
In July there was an article in The New Yorker by Lawrence Wright about the new phenomenon of art and culture in Renaissance Italy. It arose from the ashes of the horrific ‘Black Death’ plague in the Middle Ages. Let me reiterate that– we needed THE PLAGUE to grow the artistic bounty of our pals…
grancerblog 