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In: Cancer

I said I’d write this post, but the truth is, I don’t want to. It feels like having to tell people about my diagnosis all over again. Hope existed in the fact that I was stage I. That a simple surgery could remove all the cancer. Because removing the cancer led to just a 5% chance of the cancer returning within 5 years. Before, everything sounded so good. And then the pathology report. It didn’t come back as was expected. At all. The cancer spread to the pleural lining. It has spread to four of the lymph nodes they’ve tested as well. They now typeRead More →

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In: Cancer, Garden
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I survived my surgery and now I have returned home! I probably should have updated sooner, but honestly, the past week and a half flew by. A lot of it blurred past – a mix of pain meds (some of which I’m still on) and pain and walking and just surviving minute to minute – so I didn’t have time to do any updating. But now I’ll update on surgery and the update on my path report will come soon. Surgery Day The day before surgery, we went to Cleveland and did a bunch of pre-op testing, met with anesthesiology and one of Dr. Raymond’sRead More →

On:
In: Cancer, Mental Health

I’ve been listening to the song Fight Song by Rachel Platten on repeat a lot since my cancer diagnosis. I first heard the song years ago when a chronic pain friend shared a music video of it and I liked it then, but the words mean even more to me now. This is my fight songTake back my life songProve I’m alright songMy power’s turned onStarting right now, I’ll be strongI’ll play my fight songAnd I don’t really care if nobody else believes‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me Fight Song by Rachel Platten Tomorrow I head into surgery and I’mRead More →

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In: Cancer, Mental Health
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I travelled to Cleveland this past Friday for my appointment. The surgeon as well as his resident impressed me and they both answered my questions very thoroughly. Before the Appointment The day prior to my appointment, they checked how things were going with a new chest CT as well as a pulmonary function test. The pulmonary function test showed that I have very good lung function. However the chest CT showed that the tumor had grown by about 0.6 cm since it was last seen on CT in January. The tumor currently looks like a larger grape, about 2.5 cm. Talking About Surgery Originally, theRead More →

On:
In: Cancer

I attended a workshop called Poetry as a Coping Tool: How Writing Can Help with Kelsey Bigalow. She introduced erasure poetry or blackout poetry where you take a document and delete words until you are left with…something. I tried this with my lab report from my lung biopsy after my diagnosis: 03/15/24Right Lower LobeLUNGgrowing noduleSpecimen Collectedatypical cellsMARKEDLY ATYPICALpositiveDIAGNOSISMUCINOUS ADENOCARCINOMAMUCINOUS ADENOCARCINOMAMUCINOUS ADENOCARCINOMA I like how it sort of tells a story of diagnosis, from finding the nodule to collecting the biopsy, to finding out what it is.Read More →

On:
In: Cancer

I spent the past three weeks since diagnosis in a holding pattern. Each day, I make phone calls, I wait for records and wait for imaging and wait for one doctor’s office to call another. I wait each day for the thoracic surgeon’s office from Cleveland Clinic to call and let me know they reviewed the records, they looked at the imaging studies, and they contacted the offices and it’s time to make the appointment. But the day they contact me doesn’t come. I fill my time with gardening, cleaning, audiobooks, and sewing. Cleveland Clinic originally told me one week until they scheduled the appointment with theRead More →

On:
In: Cancer

It has been years since I’ve posted, but it is time to pull out the old blog because I have news – and not the good kind. I had a lung nodule show up on a CT for kidney stones in 2019. It wasn’t thought to be much of anything, but it kept growing so it was finally decided to do a biopsy to check what it was. However, they ended up finding out that I have lung cancer. Usually this type of thing isn’t caught until it is stage III or IV when it has grown significantly or has spread to other parts ofRead More →