Kind Like Katey

I’m sitting here building a blog about surviving cancer while wondering if my cancer is back.

Seems appropriate.

My back hurts. Not just my back hurts because I’m 45 and apparently sleeping wrong is an injury now kind of hurts. It’s in that spot. Right around my kidney. And because I’ve had cancer, I no longer possess the ability to have a random ache and think, Huh. I probably pulled something.

Nope.

My brain goes straight to:

Is my cancer back?

Maybe it’s nothing.

God, I hope it’s nothing.

But that’s one of the things nobody really explains to you about finishing cancer treatment.

You don’t just finish cancer.

Your body remembers it. Your brain sure as hell remembers it. Every lump, pain, weird feeling, test result and doctor’s appointment has the ability to throw you right back into that place.

I know that firsthand.

A while back, I found a lump on top of my implant.

Cancer.

Obviously.

That’s where my brain went.

It turned out to be fat necrosis. I’ve had two ultrasounds to check it, with another one coming in a few months. The last time, I sat there for almost two hours waiting for the results because the images got stuck somewhere in the computer and wouldn’t load.

Two hours.

When you’ve had cancer, two hours waiting for someone to tell you whether a lump is okay feels like two years.

And now there’s this back pain.

So maybe that explains why I’m here tonight.

I’ve spent a lot of time reading other people’s stories. Especially after I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer. I was always the reader. I rarely posted. I searched for women whose stories looked like mine and held onto every little piece of hope I could find.

But my cancer story didn’t actually start with my diagnosis.

It started long before that.

With my dad.

With my sister, Katey.

My dad’s cancer came back around the same time Katey was diagnosed for the first time.

So while Katey was beginning a fight none of us wanted for her, Dad was fighting a battle he’d already fought once before.

For a while, cancer belonged to both of them at the same time.

Katey finished treatment and reached what everyone called “remission.”

I hate that word now.

Not long after, I lost my dad.

And then, in October 2023, I lost Katey.

Then in 2025, it was my turn.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

And suddenly I wasn’t just reading other women’s cancer stories anymore.

I was living one.

I think that’s part of why I’ve felt such a pull to start writing all of this down. Because this site is called Kind Like Katey for a reason.

I originally thought I was going to write a book about all of this. I’ve been saving stories, memories and moments from my own treatment for a long time.

But I don’t want to write a book anymore.

I want to tell it here.

Not the cleaned-up version.

The real one.

The needles. The chemo. The hair. The boobs. The scars. The surgeries. The ridiculous things people say. The things that made me laugh when absolutely nothing should have been funny. The things that scared the hell out of me.

And the people who got me through it.

I want to tell you about Katey, too.

Not just about cancer. And definitely not just about how she died.

I want to tell you about how she lived.

About us growing up. The stupid things we did. The things that still make me laugh. The memories that pop into my head out of nowhere and make me wish I could pick up the phone and ask, Do you remember this?

There are parts of our story I remember perfectly.

There are other parts that are fuzzy now, and I hate that she’s not here to fill in the blanks.

Maybe writing them down is my way of keeping as many of them as I can.

And somewhere in all of that, I’ll tell my story too.

The cancer.

The fear.

The funny shit.

The ugly shit.

What happens to your body.

What happens to your marriage.

What happens to your brain when everyone else thinks the scary part should be over.

What it means to survive something and still be afraid of it.

And somehow, back to Katey again.

But tonight?

Tonight my back hurts.

I’m waiting on that stupid fucking test.

And I’m trying very hard not to Google kidney pain.

Welcome to Kind Like Katey.