Did You Ever Think Life Was Gonna Be This Way?

So, after I shared with you my scans post, I went to bed...and waited. The anxiety over my scans and what they would reveal meant I couldn't fall asleep, and my ongoing cough kept me from drifting off anyway - but I was also so tired that I wasn't really awake, either, so I just sort of dog-paddled through the night, treading proverbial water by listening to audiobooks, eating Bit O' Honeys, and playing Yahtzee on my phone. Sleep finally overtook me around 2:30 or 3. But Thursday was another busy day at our house - it was the Thanksgiving lunch celebration at the kids' school at noon, bloodwork and my follow-up scan appointment started at 1:30 all the way across town (of course), kids had to be ferried about to and from wildly different locations at the same exact time (4:30), and then I was scheduled to give a lecture (with my voice only at about 50% capacity) at the local library about the Supreme Court at 6:45. Oh, and it snowed. After being 80 yesterday. The news h

Today was a scan day for me. I get scans  every 10-12 weeks. What are scans and why do I have them? Why are they both bad and good? What's it like to hang out in an MRI tube for an hour and a half? Read on, friends. All will be revealed. So, there are a number of different ways to take pictures of the inside of your body. We all know about x-rays, which use a quick blast of radiation to give a look at whatever it is targeting - a broken bone, pneumonia, and so on. Dense things - bones, tumors and so on - show up white on an X-ray but soft tissues are grey. But x-rays only give a single image at a time, and the result of an x-ray is 2-D. It's flat. You can't peer around inside of an organ or anything like that. It's just surface shots. If you've never had an X-ray, you basically just stand in front of a little white board, or stick your arm of leg or whatever in front of the board, and the technician positions you, runs out of the room, flips a switch and then comes

Wow, so - it's been a while. Here's the thing: I got tired of thinking about cancer all the time, and writing about cancer, and living with cancer, and advocating for people with cancer (that sounds horrible, I know, but it's true), and worrying about cancer, and telling everyone all about my cancer. So, I took a break from all that, and when I wasn't in the hospital getting spartial splenic embolizations (OW OW OW) or trying to get rid of the Pain Syndrome (don't even ask) that the first emobolization gave me or visiting new and exciting specialists, like the hepatologist (that's the liver guy, right? Not the lizard one?), I did some other things. Like read awesome books, and got a new (very part-time but totally fun) job, and revised my career goals, and spent time with my beautiful family. And did I mention that I read a lot of books? I've been feeling pretty good for the last month or two - the medical stars (and my mom's generosity) even aligned f

...and you know what that means? I can't wait for this month to be OVER. Thankfully, my husband's birthday is nestled into the middle of the month, which at least gives me something to look forward to, but yeah, April can just get the f*** out. I was diagnosed with stage four cancer in April 2013. In April 2014, I had recently discovered that I was no longer NED and was taking a truly heinous mix of Irinotecan and Erbitux, which gave me terrible acne-like blemishes all over my head, scalp, neck and chest and also made my hair shed so much that I had to cut most of it off and it still hasn't grown back to my liking! I wound up in the hospital in April 2015 and then went home trailing my new oxygen sidekick, who stuck around for about 10 months. This month...this month my platelets have decided to quit cooperating entirely - which means I can't take my chemo! - and so Wells (my oncologist) wants me to have a partial splenic embolization in about 5 weeks. This means they&#

If you're friends with me on Facebook - or in real life! - then you know that I spent last week in Washington, DC with FightCRC, an advocacy group that works to raise awareness, increase screenings, and raise funds for colorectal cancer research. I joined the group last fall, when they generously allowed me to become one of their research advocates (RATS), and I've been in love with them and the work that they do ever since; I'm truly honored to be a part of the organization. Beauty This year, I attended FightCRC's tenth annual Call on Congress event, where survivors, caregivers, loved ones, and activists get together for training and then take to Capitol Hill for a day of meetings with Congressional representatives, urging them to pass bills and support government funding that goes towards age-appropriate screening efforts as well as research and development efforts that help create more treatment options for patients and that will, someday, make this dreadful cancer h

There's something to be said for safety, especially when you've been living in a state of total uncertainty for almost three years. Im not talking about me, this time. I know my safe spaces - I can retreat into a book, into a couple of glasses of wine, into coloring or online card games or knitting. I can take a long bubble bath and pretend the whole time that I am just living the life of a rich housewife.  But safe spaces aren't as accessible for my children. Oftentimes, they don't even realize they're looking for one.  Even with that in mind, mydaughter, I think, has fared better. She knows the details of my illness, and she knows how to duck and cover, whether that be in the library or with a teacher or merely by bouncing her ever present purple ball in the basement or the backyard. But for F, it's so much harder. Here's a kid who was told his mama had advanced cancer just a few weeks after he turned four. In other words, it has been the foundation and ba