By the time many of you are reading this, I'll be DONE with chemo. After 16 rounds of drugs strong enough to kill you (they certainly tried), I'm finally finished with this first chunk of my cancer treatment. The past 20 weeks have both flown by, and also crawled at a snails pace. I've built … Continue reading The start of 2019 & the end of Chemo →

Fighting cancer is full of a series of decisions where you're trying to ensure the rewards outweigh the risk. Its a set of choices where both options suck, but one sucks a little less. In theory, deciding to do Chemo is an easy choice. Because with Triple-negative breast cancer, its basically the only way to … Continue reading Between the Devil and the deep blue sea →

I survived my first round with the Red Devil. And after another 3 rounds, I have every expectation that I'll emerge from this match as victor with cancer getting knocked out and not just losing on points alone. Sorry, this boxing analogy is probably only interesting to about 3 of you. I'll stop. My first … Continue reading Rolling with the Punches →

On Tuesday, I switch up my chemo drugs and start on a dose-dense cocktail of Doxorubicin & Cyclophosphamide (nicknamed "AC") for 4 rounds, administered every other week. These drugs both damage the DNA inside cancer cells so they can’t divide, which causes them to die (yay!). Doxorubicin stops damaged cancer cells from continuing to grow, … Continue reading My date with the Red Devil →

When I moved back to Minnesota 8 years ago there are two things I quickly did to make MN feel like home again, things that brought me great joy during my time on the East Coast that I was hoping to replicate back in the Midwest. So, in the summer of 2010 I joined an … Continue reading My Lax Peeps →

While the last 12 weeks of chemo (and the four weeks leading up to chemo) have gone by in a flash, they were also chock full of all sorts of medical appointments and what not. So, I decided to give my cancer timeline an update. When I was in the whirlwind of "oh, shit, I … Continue reading My Updated Cancer Timeline →

Well, I've officially got 11 rounds of chemo under my belt. I'm basically a professional at it by now. Its meant that each week for the past few have felt like old hat, and has also felt like there wasn't much to update the blog about. Also, I've been working on keeping good sleep habits, … Continue reading Unwritten Rules of Chemo →

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and with it comes lots of associated events, activities and special days. Yesterday was one of those special days - BREAST RECONSTRUCTION AWARENESS (BRA) day. So in honor of that day, I thought I'd take the time to give an update on a part of this journey I haven't discussed … Continue reading BRA Day →

A few weeks back, a family friend, after learning that I was on leave from work, asked, "So what do you do all day?" And I struggled a bit to respond. Because I'm busy. Like, I have a task list of non-cancer stuff that I would love to get to (refinish my bookcases, paint my … Continue reading Fighting cancer is a full time job →

I'm a strong believer in Love Languages - the idea that you need to know how you best like to be "loved" and that the people around you may want to be loved in very different ways than you. Those that know me well know that my top 2 love languages are Receiving Gifts and … Continue reading Cancer Perks →