Category: Life After Cancer
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If I Had Known
Three Years Without Katey — October 11, 2026 Three years. I don’t know how that’s possible. Three years since my sister died. Three years since I lost my person. I’ve spent a lot of time lately looking back at our last conversations. Reading old text messages, remembering those final days, and wondering how I didn’t…
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We Walked for Me. We Walked for Katey.
Today was my very first Susan G. Komen MORE THAN PINK Walk in Charlotte. And what a day it was! The weather actually cooperated for the most part. We got rained on during the opening ceremony and a little during the walk, but thankfully, the rain held off for most of the morning. We had…
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Clear Scans… So Now What?
Today, I got the news I was desperately hoping for. My scans are clear. Those are four words I am incredibly grateful to be able to say. But getting to those four words took pretty much the entire damn day. And cancer has a funny way of making even really good news feel complicated. The…
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Breast MRI vs. Brain MRI
Today I had a brain MRI. And because apparently I now have enough MRI experience to rank them, I feel qualified to announce a winner. Or loser. Whichever one gets the title of Worst MRI Ever. Breast MRI. By a freaking landslide. The brain MRI today was a cakewalk compared to the breast MRI I…
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Eighteen Years. No Need to Wait for Twenty. ❤️
Today is our 18th wedding anniversary. Eighteen years of marriage. Eighteen years of loving each other, driving each other absolutely crazy, laughing at things that probably aren’t funny to anyone else, and somehow continuing to choose each other through it all. I almost didn’t write about our anniversary. I thought, Maybe I’ll wait until twenty…
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There Will Never Be Another Picture
I’ve been looking through a lot of old photos lately. Every time I write a story for this blog, I go digging. Through my phone. Facebook. Old albums. Screenshots. Anywhere I might find a picture that goes with the memory I’m trying to tell. And somewhere in all that looking, I realized something that absolutely…
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My First Pink Walk
I’ve never done a breast cancer walk before. Not when Katey was going through treatment. Not after we lost her. And not while I was going through treatment myself. This will be my first one. And somehow that makes deciding to do it feel like a bigger deal than I expected. For a long time,…
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Everyone Thinks I’m Back to Normal.
There’s this weird thing that happens after cancer treatment. Your hair starts growing back. Your color comes back. You start going places again. You’re back to work full time. You laugh. You make plans. You post pictures where you look like yourself. And everybody thinks you’re better. Hell, sometimes I try really hard to make…
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Well, a little update…
Remember that back pain I mentioned? Turns out I have fucking shingles. Honestly, I’m weirdly relieved. Not because shingles is particularly fun — because it most definitely is not — but because when you’ve had cancer, unexplained pain hits differently. Your brain doesn’t go to maybe I pulled a muscle. It goes straight to places…
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The Test That Won’t Let Me Forget
I scheduled my next Signatera test today. September 10. And I would love to tell you that I calmly put it on my calendar and went on with my day. Yeah. No. Because the last time I took this test, it came back positive. For those who have never had the pleasure of learning an…