Breast Cancer Chronicles: Finding the EASE Within Disease

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a beautiful weekend, I know I did! Last time we checked in I said that scary word: Progression. While I love the meaning of this word in most other aspects of my life,  cancer is not one of them. I got a liver biopsy two weeks ago and would you believe it the results were benign. Huh? So my numbers and scan say progression, biopsy doesn't. So what do I think now? Is the rest of it a mistake too or just the liver? Was the biopsy wrong? Did they miss something? The questions go on and on. Although we have no real answers to all those questions, we have switched my treatments. I am no longer taking Xeloda, I have moved over to Faslodex and Affinitor. I am waiting for the Affinitor to arrive in the mail and they promise me no major side effects. They have also put me on a bone strengthener in case what they are seeing on the scan is massive scar tissue which can lead to holes in my bones which can lead to me breaking a bone very easily...

Here I go AGAIN. It's kind of funny to me looking at my last blog post, worrying about the cancer creeping it's way back into my body. It's like I knew what was happening. Knew I shouldn't feel safe just yet. Right before I left for Christmas I saw my doctors, I left that appointment feeling like I was stable and everything was looking good. WRONG. The next day I received an email from my doctor that my tumor markers had shot up by 50 points. I instantly burst into tears, and then spent the rest of the week at my sisters house wondering what in the HELL I was going to do. I came home late Thursday night and by Friday afternoon I was being scanned. I received those results on Wednesday evening and they were NOT desirable. There is progression, AGAIN. According to my doctors I have small lesions in my bones, lungs, and liver again. UGH. This is EXACTLY where I was a year ago. The lesions were bigger and more widespread then. But really? Really? I have done so many rou...

Today I am checking in from Austin, TX y'all!! I'm here with my band mate, Angela playing some gigs and loving up on this town! SO much good food, so much good music and such great friends here-old and new! Currently I am writing in Cedar Creek Studios while Angela records a guitar show, we are simply having the best time living our dream. We have a few more shows left in town and I will be sad when it's all over. Traveling and playing music brings me so much joy, and helps me get out of my ruts and routines. I've spent much of this year adjusting and readjusting and adjusting and readjusting. Sometimes it still feels like my head is spinning, I can't quite believe the year I've had. Six months of chemotherapy, brain radiation, getting a port (for the second time), being told I most likely had about 6 months to live and fighting that with everything I had. 2017 was by far the most interesting (for lack of a better word I guess) year of my life! I spent so much...

Another Thanksgiving under my belt, and I for one am incredibly thankful that I was able to be here and be healthy enough to enjoy it. I can't say that enough, how thankful I am to be ALIVE. I cooked, I cleaned, I drank my (organic/sulfite free!) wine and ate more food than I ever should. I had a combination of family and friends (and dogs!) over and it was one of my favorite days of this entire year. For me these major holidays are a little reminder that things could have turned out very differently for me. They remind me to stay rooted in the present and enjoy the moment. That is no easy feat, especially now. I can't help but wonder about my future and if I'll be just as healthy come next Thanksgiving, or if things will have made a turn for the worst. Some days I worry about the future and I think about everything I've gone through, some days I completely forget it all. I can't help but have moments of worry; worrying that if I'm not totally on top of it, thin...

Two years ago today I went to the ER with a swollen left arm and trouble breathing. I was concerned about what was going on as my arm seemed to have gone from normal to swollen quick. Having started chemo a month before hand I was scared and worried. It turns out it was simply a blood clot in my catheter line (my port for my chemo was in my left arm and it is fairly common for a blood clot to form in the line). What I wasn't expecting was for the doctors to tell me I had a nodule that looked concerning in my left lung. I relayed this information to my oncology team and nothing was done. Not until July of 2016 when I had surgery to remove the nodule, which turned out out to be my metastatic breast cancer. So today, this day, is my only reference point to when I KNOW I was Stage IV, which means today marks the day when I know for a fact that I am beating the odds. I have connected with other women with Stage IV MBC on Facebook and I see the stories, some are beating the odds and h...

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...