lunhs cancer

I've had a ringside seat to the evolution of cancer care. The first time I heard the heart-dropping, stomach-churning, breath-stealing words, "you have cancer," I was 14 years old. The second time I heard them, I was 37. The first time, a chronic ache in my shoulder turned out to be bone cancer. The second time, a chronic cough turned out to be metastatic lung cancer. When I was a teenager undergoing chemotherapy for osteosarcoma, I never really thought I was going to die. Me and my teen cancer comrades in the hospital went through hell together. But I na�vely thought we would all get better and go home again one day. I have seen cancer through an adolescent's eyes, and I have seen it through the eyes of a mom with three small children. I was a busy mom, working, going to grad school, and raising our four-year-old son and two-year-old twin daughters. I was tired all the time, but who wouldn't be? And I had a string of chest colds that I just couldn't shake. Or...

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...

I am taking a break from talking about lung cancer to write a post in honor of my amazing daughters. These little fighters came into the world at 32 weeks, after several almost-deliveries (and almost-miscarriages) in the preceding few months. Mikaela pulled the ejection cord, as Jason likes to put it, and they were delivered by emergency c-section (like, SUPER emergency c-section) on March 8, 2011. I had been in the hospital on bed rest since 28 weeks because of placenta previa . I am very thankful that I was in the hospital that night, since I had a massive bleed and the doctors got me from my room, into the surgery suite, and got both girls out in under 10 minutes . Man, I just can't do anything the easy way, can I? The girls spent the next 4 weeks in the NICU, hooked up to tubes and monitors. I remember looking at their tiny arms and wondering how in the world the nurses got an IV into those veins. To this day, when I am getting poked (often repeatedly) to put in an IV, I think ...

23 years ago today, at age 14, I was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma of the right humerus. It is strange that now I have to refer to that as "the first time I had cancer." I recall driving to the biopsy early that October morning, when the first fingers of Minnesota winter were really starting to grip the state, covering everything with frost and making the air harsh and brisk. I looked out the window and thought to myself, quite dramatically, "thus begins the winter of my life." The doctors very strongly suspected that the biopsy would come back positive for cancer, and told me they would be able to tell by looking at the specimen for just a moment under a microscope, so the plan was to keep me under anesthetic and put in my port once they confirmed it was positive. I remember waking up after surgery and feeling for my new port. It was there, so I knew my answer. "Here we go." I fell back into my groggy slumber. What followed were 11 of the hardest mont...