lunhs cancer

This is my 100th post to this blog! Who would have ever guessed, when I wrote that first entry of my travelogue, that I would end up here. Why do I write this blog? My motivation has changed radically with each new chapter. In 2005, a free-spirited young woman set off traveling around the globe and used this space to document her adventures. Upon returning to the United States, she met her perfect match and got married in an idyllic beach wedding. A few years later, the two welcomed their first child into the world. This new mom wanted to capture each amazing moment of her little boy's development and share it with friends and family. Since parenting was such a joy, the couple decided to have another child, and were pleasantly shocked to discover that this new baby was, in fact, twins. The tale took a turn as the pregnancy met with complications that resulted in a month of hospital bed rest followed by a premature delivery of the beautiful baby girls. After a harrowing stay at t...

Cancer is forcing me to learn a whole new kind of patience. Though I am starting to feel fairly decent on my new meds, my stomach is still unpredictable, and I don't have the energy I used to have. In some ways, because I feel close to normal it is all the more frustrating to face my limitations. I can't multi-task as seamlessly as I used to, which I attribute to the powerful medicines that have been bombarding my body for the past 6 months. I find myself getting overwhelmed when I'm trying to follow several things at once, whereas I used to thrive in these situations. Janet of Gray Connections wrote a lovely piece about how this "chemobrain" side effect has helped her to empathize with people who face various challenges. (Janet is also a ROS1+ stage IV lung cancer fighter, and a lovely and brilliant lady.) This experience is forcing me (sometimes dragging me kicking and screaming) to become more patient with myself and accept that things may need to move at a sl...

The past few weeks have been pretty challenging. The side effects from my new superdrug, Xalkori, hit me hard. Hats off to fellow stage IV fighter and Xalkori user Kim (you can read all about her at aquariusvscancer.com ), who warned me that I should give myself a good month to settle into the side effect routine with this drug. Boy, was she right. I've had a crazy number of side effects: nausea, vomiting, reflux, taste changes, constipation, diarrhea, stomach cramps, dry eyes, blurry vision, achy knees and hips, fatigue, and strange strobe-like visual effects. That last one is pretty fascinating. When I have been in a dark room for a while (such as watching a movie) then move into the light, for a few minutes I get tracers around moving objects, sort of like those stroboscopic photos I remember seeing in Boston. I went to the eye doctor to check out my intermittent blurry vision and he determined it was because of how dry my eyes are ("they look like stucco"). While a v...