Honoring one of my Guardian Angels on my 10 Year "Cancerversary"

As I have mentioned previously, unlike many cancer patients, I make it a point not to mark my “cancerversaries.” The day I was diagnosed was pretty freaking terrible, and I take Deepak Chopra’s caution to heart: “If your attention is…

Grief is Love (Update #29)

Traditional Chinese Medicine (“TCM”) associates the lungs with grief, so when too much grief is present, it can weaken the lungs. I don’t necessarily give this philosophy a ton of credence, but I nevertheless worry about how experiencing grief can…

LCAM 2023 FUNdraiser - Join me for a Zentangle class!

Oh wow, it’s already mid-November — I’m a bit tardy to welcome you to Lung Cancer Awareness Month! The world feels especially bleak these days, and  it’s incumbent on each of us to contribute light where we can. So, it’s…

Bracing for Life (Update #28)

I got braces a couple weeks ago. I still can’t quite wrap my head around it.  I’ve known I needed them for years. I was in the midst of treatment for TMJ when I got diagnosed with lung cancer and…

Cancer Stages

There’s a lot of emphasis in oncology on “staging a patient.” That’s a bit of a misnomer. What the docs really mean when they refer to staging a patient is staging the cancer (how much it has spread), not the…

Update 27: Dream Big

Oh, hi there. Long time, no chat. Sorry if I caused any one any concern. I know from following fellow cancer patient blogs that when they go silent, I start to worry.  So I’ll cut to the chase, Update #27:…

Update 26: Envy (and an LCAM FUNdraiser announcement!)

There’s a thing that happened when I got diagnosed with cancer that I only recently stopped doing. I compared myself to other cancer patients. It was a way to grasp for straws when I was standing in quicksand.  I didn’t…

NED - I’m Not That Into Him (Update #25)

  A couple of weeks ago, I shared with a community of fellow cancer patients that I had another round of good scans (that makes an 8+ years since I was diagnosed). Amidst all the cheers and posts of support,…

The Not Really Terminal Terminal Patient Put in the Wrong Terminal

Have you ever gone to the airport to catch a flight to another country and you arrive at the international terminal only to discover you’re in the wrong place, apparently your international flight isn’t “international enough” to qualify for the…

My friend Linnea Olson died today. She had lived with a Stage IV lung cancer diagnosis for over 16 years. She never achieved the holy grail of “NED” (no evidence of disease). She lived every inch of those 16+ years…