The waiting game...

           Exactly two years ago is when this cancer business started for me. Two years ago. It was two years ago that I finally was releasing an album of original music with my band, Roses & Cigarettes, ready to go on tour. I was 31, single, and feeling like a rock star...when, BOOM! What the hell is that hard lump in my boob? As we know it was cancer, and ever since that day in May two years ago, nothing has been the same. And I haven't received ANY good news pertaining to my cancer since, really. Even though they kept telling me I'd be fine, it's only stage II we can CURE that. Yeah, tell my Stage IV diagnosis that! Every time I got news from a test or a scan it was never what I wanted to hear. It never had the words "decreased, regression, smaller" ever. Through all my smiles and positive attitude, through every trip to some tropical destination the underlying feeling was the same, "I'm really going to die one day soon."

Don't get me wrong, I keep the faith. I hold onto hope SO TIGHTLY. If I didn't I wouldn't get up every day, I couldn't. The fear is too great if you don't also hold the hope. After my last scan I really thought that was it. The doctors were telling me if nothing changed I had 6 months. I am 33 years old, how the hell are they telling me I have 6 months left here? I REFUSED to believe it. That doesn't mean that I just said "No, that's not happening to me!" and so it was....I wish I was that powerful of a witch! But I did say NO. A big, huge, all capitals and exclamation points NO!!!! This disease started to feel like a mystery I needed to uncover. I said more than once I felt like I was working on a medical degree while also becoming Nancy Drew. I didn't know if the results would be worth the effort. So often with cancer it isn't. People go to many years of medical school and know way more about all the science than I do. But I've lived in this body for over 33 years now, and if I want to keep living in it I know I have to trust myself.

After my scan in January I fired my doctor. Ok well I didn't fire her, but we took "some space." It's not her fault my cancer spread like wild fire, she was just giving me the standard of care. The standard of care didn't work the first time, so God knows why I thought it would work the second....but I did. And so I went, taking hormone therapy and chemotherapy pills every day and going about my day to day life. This is when I also started my cannabis oil treatments, for those who know about cannabis oil or "Rick Simpson Oil, RSO" I started on a higher CBD ratio and then was maintaining 1 gram a day of a 1:1 CBD/THC ratio. I changed my ENTIRE lifestyle all in hopes that the small sprinkling of metastatic disease in my lungs would be gone come the January scan. As we know it wasn't gone and it had decided to set up camp all over my body (brains, lungs, breast, bones, liver). At this point I lost it. The nice girl who was doing what the doctors said and smiling her way through this was done. No more miss nice gal....I want answers. I want appointments. I want to see specialists and I want you OUT of my way. It hasn't been pretty. I have had MASSIVE breakdowns. I have yelled at people that probably (definitely) didn't deserve it, and I wouldn't stop pushing until I got the answers I wanted. It has been EXHAUSTING and I really wasn't sure if I was using the last months of my life trying to save my life.

A GLIMMER OF HOPE

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I have received news regarding my health and cancer it has been bad.
2 breast exams=sonogram
sonogram=mammogram
mammogram=biopsy
biopsy=cancer
cancer=surgery
surgery=chemo
chemo=radiation..........

and so on and so forth. EVERY time I got bad news. News of the disease progressing in my body. I have grown to hate phone calls from the hospital. Appointment reminder phone calls send my adrenaline through the roof. BUT on May 11,2017 that bad luck streak ended. Yesterday I had a PETscan, and to say the results were surprising would be an understatement.

REGRESSION. There is REGRESSION. "The liver shows no suspicious focal abnormality or abnormal FDG uptake" THOSE WORDS RIGHT THERE. That's when I cried. The God damn liver. Because that organ, that stupid organ is the one that took my friend. It's the one I feared more than any of the other ones. Because it can mean time. When you're sick the thing you are fighting against is time. You want more of it, you're afraid you've let too much of it go without doing exactly what it is you want. Or that you'll live and have the time but in what state? In what condition? I still don't know and I don't know what my timing is. But I know that whatever I've been doing bought me some more of it. The masses in my lungs have shrunk in size, tumors in bones have been RESOLVED. I'm sorry what did you say? Resolved? I think I just peed a little.....

I know I still have cancer. I know what the science says, blah blah....but I know what my body is doing. I knew I was right when I didn't trust the drugs they wanted me on. And when my disease was progressing and they wanted me on MORE aggressive versions of what I was already taking I said NO! Because I listened to my intuition. Listen, this could have gone either way. It still could. This is ONE scan. I will have scans for the rest of my life. But it's MY scan. It's my POSITIVE scan. Today my name got the phone call with good news. And I'm going to take this today and hold onto it real tight for while.