Breast Cancer Chronicles: Finding the EASE Within Disease

I have officially entered my mid 30's. How did that happen? I've never been one to complain about getting older, having two older sisters I was always scratching to keep up. Aging has always felt like a badge of honor to me, you live, you learn, you grow. I couldn't wait to see who I was going to become and what life had in store for me. I didn't anticipate life throwing Stage IV Breast Cancer at me that's for sure, but we can't always control the cards we are dealt. I've always been ALL about a birthday celebration (ask my cousin Jeff-he won't EVER forget my birthday because as a child I DRILLED it into his noggin), this year felt different though, it felt interesting - for lack of a better word. I've written about the day I broke up with Google (that saucy little minx keeps me coming back for more-but the trust shall never be the same!). I googled " Stage IV Breast Cancer " and reading the first thing that popped up was like being punch...

It's weird the way life works out. This month I'll turn 34 years old, and needless to say this isn't at all how I thought my life would look on my 34th birthday. I'm not complaining, it's just strange. We all make these plans for ourselves; I'll go to this college, then get this job, then move here, get married have babies and live happily ever after. What I couldn't plan was getting diagnosed with a terminal illness, or any serious illness. How could I have planned for it? You don't anticipate getting sick, you don't see it coming, there aren't exactly warning signs leading up to a breast cancer diagnosis. It just happens, quite literally out of nowhere. And then from that moment on, your life is changed. Time keeps moving forward and you can't go back, you are forever changed. The thing is though you aren't prepared to be forever changed. My life turned on it's head, just completely upside down. For a long time I thought of it as te...

Life has been busy lately, and it's been strange to get used to that pace again. Living with MBC (Metastatic Breast Cancer) means living your entire life without a solid answer to anything. Going with the flow takes on an entirely new meaning. The tides don't follow a predictable schedule, it may be high tide one minute and very low tide the next, finding your own steady footing is a challenge. But I like a challenge. In fact I've complained about them most of my life but I think deep down I actually love them. Attempting to flourish in the face of this disease is one of the biggest challenges I have faced in my life. I have changed in immeasurable ways and have been forced to not only look at my own mortality (we ALL have an expiration date), but learn to live with the knowledge that my expiration date may come a hell of a lot sooner than that of my peers. And please don't hit me back with the comment about how "I could get hit by a bus tomorrow," not only i...

        It has officially been one month since my last round of chemo. Which is kind of INSANE , considering the level dis-trust I had in chemo after the first ones failed. This chemo lasted longer than my previous chemo, doubled it actually. I have now spent 9 months of my life putting a poison into my body to help eliminate the cancer that was trying to eliminate me. I'm not sure I'll ever really wrap my brain around this whole experience. Two years ago when I was first diagnosed (Stage II) I was anxious to be done. I tossed on wigs, sipped on some beer, saw my friends and tried to say that this was a "temporary stop" before I returned to my life. It's just a test of the emergency broadcast system, we will return to your regularly scheduled programming soon! But it wasn't just a stop, and it wasn't a test, turns out this  IS my life. Looking back at the person I was two years ago is strange for me now. I do not feel like her....at all. I am still ...

EMPATHY- noun   the ability to understand and share the feelings of another SYMPATHY- noun   1. feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune   2. understanding between people; common feeling I've been thinking A LOT about these two words this year. A WHOLE lot. For a multitude of reasons; the most obvious being because I got sick and I needed a whole lot of empathy and sympathy. But it's gone beyond that now. It's gone beyond wanting my family and close friends to display these qualities during my time of need. It's become about these two little words working their true meanings into my every day life. Working with the awareness that I have no clue what's going on with anyone else isn't always easy, but it's also not that difficult. Let's be honest going on social media these days can feel like entering a war zone. Political opinions flying everywhere, people who once broke bread and shared pitchers of cheap beer are at each ot...

8 rounds (16 separate infusions-2 of which I was too ill for so technically 14) of chemotherapy in my body and hopefully that is THE LAST of it. For now....... Having MBC (metastatic breast cancer) means I will ALWAYS technically have cancer. I feel incredibly redundant typing that sentence, but it is the truth of my life and can be easily forgotten. When I feel/look healthy it's hard not to want to forget about that cancer and to truly believe that everything is going to be fine. In fact it's healthy to do that, I can't live in a constant state of fear. But the fact remains that I have a disease that western medicine hasn't discovered a cure for.......yet. Throughout the past year I have been working on developing my new normal . It's been a challenge and there have been many ups and also many downs. I have been fearful, overwhelmed with sadness and anger, and uncertain about everything, I have also been hopeful, filled with love and certain that I was hea...

As I approach my last (for now-aka this better be the last one for a while) round of chemotherapy I'm thinking a lot about what my next move is. I got an extra week added on to the end of this chemo because my body has had enough and wants a break. Cancer treatments destroy a person's body all for the end goal of hopefully being "healthy." It seems back-asswards to me from a logical stand point but I'm not sure any of this has been logical at all. Cancer defies logic most of the time; a treatment that works for one doesn't work for another. Even if the numbers are EXACTLY the same, individuality also applies to medicine. Knowing that cancer can have a mind of it's own is the scariest part of this disease. In the past couple of weeks I've talked to several cancer patients, younger, older, breast cancer and other forms as well. Friends of mine have contacted me and asked me to help other people, even if they don't listen to a word of advice I give...