lunhs cancer

My port had stopped working, so they needed to start an I.V. The first nurse had blown two veins and had called in a replacement who was on her way to blowing a third. In the grand scheme of things, a few needle pokes were nothing. I had been through worse before, and there would be much harder days ahead. But in that moment, it was too much. In that moment, the months of treatment, the endless hospitalization, the constant nausea, and the helplessness were completely overwhelming.  I burst out crying. I can't do this anymore. My sister, who had been sitting in the chair next to my hospital bed, stood up and walked over to me. She cracked a smile. "Remember that day when we were little kids and we were swimming at the lake, playing Jaws?" I stopped crying and looked at her, confused. She went on to recount in exquisite detail a day years earlier when we had been swimming and had gotten our legs stuck in the weeds and muck at the bottom of the lake and I had thought that a...

For those of you who follow my scan/doctor appointment schedule (which is amazingly sweet, by the way) you would be passing the time this weekend patiently waiting for scan results on Tuesday. And you would have been almost as shocked as I was Friday afternoon when my phone rang, and the caller ID showed that it was the cancer center. By the time I answered the phone and heard my oncologist's voice, I was trembling. Why in the world would she be calling me when we had planned to discuss the results at my appointment on Tuesday? She quickly said, "Don't worry, your scans are fine. But we found a small blood clot and would like to be safe and start you on heparin injections. I'm so sorry you will have to give yourself shots." Me: " But my scans are fine?!? Okay, when do I start?" I don't love the idea of twice-daily shots, but I like it a lot better than cancer progression! I went in to the clinic Friday afternoon and learned how to do the L ovenox sho...

I have been so busy writing stuff for CURE that I haven't been posting new content for this lovely bloggety-blog. And there is a huge piece of the puzzle that I have been leaving out. I briefly mentioned this in a previous post , but Jason and I are knee-deep in launching our dream business. I guess I keep forgetting to write about it because we are so busy working on it that I don't have a lot of brain space left to reflect! So, on with the story.... Ever since Jason and I have known each other (seriously, we talked about this on one of our first dates), we have planned to one day open a theatre together. We knew we wanted to create a space where people could come together and have fun, laugh, be creative, and just enjoy. However, since we have both worked in theatre for so long, we are well aware of how difficult it is to have a financially viable theatre. We looked at models of theatres that were successful, and they all had other sources of funding in addition to ticket sa...

There has been a lot of talk lately about the personalized medicine revolution and President Obama's initiative to fund precision medicine. We hear about genetic sequencing and analyzing DNA, but what does all of this mean to a cancer patient? Sit back while I tell you a little story�. In May of 2013 I was diagnosed with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer at the age of 37. No idea why. Since it had already spread from my lung throughout my body, surgery was not an option. Cue the devastation, the panic, the shock. The plan of action was chemotherapy, and while the side effects were far from fun, I was relieved that at least it was working, and my giant tumor (seriously, it wrapped all around my left lung) was shrinking. I could breathe a little easier . . . literally. But a body can only tolerate harsh chemo for so long before the side effects become too damaging to the other organs. So, what do to next? The cancer was smaller, but not gone, and we needed another treatment to keep ...

When you get a cancer diagnosis, your whole world flips upside down. Your focus shifts to treatments, side effects, scans and statistics. Sometimes, however, politics creep in. The Food and Drug Administration has just announced that it plans to begin a new level of oversight for laboratory developed tests (LDTs). I, and many others with cancer, think this is a terrible idea. But wait, you say, isn't FDA oversight a good thing? We all want to stay safe! Absolutely! I want to know that I am safe, and oversight is necessary and beneficial! However, there already is oversight. These laboratories currently undergo a certification process by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, as well as other accreditation agencies. This new FDA regulation adds an additional, time-consuming hoop that will slow down testing of things like cancer mutations. Those of us with metastatic cancer don't have years to wait for FDA approval of these genetic tests. I have a rare mutation that dri...