This week marks two years since my cancer diagnosis, and I still don’t really know how I’m supposed to feel about it. On August 22, 2024, we learned I had Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. That date is also my husband’s birthday, which makes this anniversary complicated in a way I may never fully…
Cancer treatment can save a life, but it does not always bring back the life someone had before. Survivorship often hides pain, fatigue, infertility, fear, trauma, and lasting effects that patients are too often expected to accept in silence. One of the hardest parts of cancer is how quickly a medical side effect can…
I don’t know if I’m just in a particularly irritated mood today, or if it’s because I just do not feel good, but every commercial break on Pluto TV seems to remind me that I have cancer. It could be the algorithm. Maybe it’s because I’ve looked up so many treatments, read countless studies,…
Today I sat in an infusion chair for the thirty-third time. When people hear that I am currently in No Evidence of Active Disease, they often assume that means I must be doing well. In many ways, I am. My treatment is working. My scans are stable. My oncologist is happy with where things…
There was a time when death itself terrified me. Not in the casual way people talk about being afraid to die, but in a way that consumed me physically. Even as a little girl, I remember moments where the thought would hit me out of nowhere. I would be sitting in a classroom, lying…
I came home from Italy on Monday and went straight back into the treatment chair on Tuesday morning. It feels almost cruel how quickly real life comes back after two weeks of sunsets over the Amalfi Coast, sipping wine on Mount Etna, exploring Florence with my husband, and floating in the clear Tyrrhenian Sea.…
For the past week, I’ve had a meltdown every single day at 6:00 pm. It’s not just around six or sometime in the evening. It’s six o’clock, almost exactly, as if my body set an alarm I never wanted. Some nights, it passes in twenty minutes if I can pull myself out of it.…
It’s rare to find a place where you can say “stage 4 breast cancer” without worrying about how others will react, or feeling the need to soften your words for their comfort. At the Living Beyond Breast Cancer Thriving Together: 2026 Mets Conference that pressure faded away. When I walked in for the first…
Birthdays take on a new meaning when you’re living with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. Before cancer, birthdays were just another year, another candle on the cake, another sign that time moves on, whether you notice or not. Now, every birthday feels sacred. When you learn you have an incurable disease, you stop taking…
There is a question people don’t always ask out loud, but you can see it in their face almost immediately after they hear my diagnosis. How did you not know? It’s rarely meant to be cruel. Most of the time it comes from fear. We have been taught a very specific story about breast…