For the most part, I keep my private life private. I'm sure sometimes it doesn't seem that way, but I'm very careful about what I share and who I share it with. That hasn't been the case with cancer, though. When it comes to this, I share everything I can because I know I'm not alone in this journey and I hope that by sharing my experiences I can help somebody else either by raising awareness or help somebody going through it by letting them know that hey, I'm here. We're in this together.
If ...
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Hair & life
I had my seven year old take this picture of me and my intention was to keep it so that I could come back to it on days that I feel a little helpless, but then I looked at it and decided that I wanted to share it.
It looks like a picture of a woman packing up a wig, but it's so much more than that. It's a picture of a woman with a head full of hair putting away a wig that she wore when she felt self-conscious about being bald. It's a picture of a woman who had her breasts taken away, her ...
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My kids and my journey
Ever since I started blogging my cancer journey, I've been getting emails from extraordinary women who have either been in my position or have been put in my position. The latter breaks my heart, as I don't wish this on anybody. The other day I received one from a woman who has two kids around the same age as mine (6 & 5), and she asked me how they have dealt with everything.
This is something I'm asked pretty often and rarely know how to answer, so when I responded to her email and it ...
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Make it count.
The main person I went to visit in DR this past week was my aunt/godmother. She was diagnosed with cancer just as I was finishing up my chemo treatments, and I hadn't had a chance to see her. When I went to visit, she had just finished one of her treatments a couple of days prior, so she was really out of it. The entire time I was sitting beside her, my heart was in my throat. This was a woman who was a no BS workaholic. She would have the flu and still wake up at 5am to go to work, and if she ...
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Normal.
My aunt, who lives in Dominican Republic, was diagnosed with cancer in November. I found out about it the day I finished my last chemo treatment, which was bad since I was already experiencing a bittersweet moment knowing that it would be my last time there but so many were just starting and would never finish, etc.
Unlike my specific cancer, hers has no cure. Still her oncologist suggested chemo so that she could try everything. She's a vain person, my aunt, and I don't mean that in a bad ...
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Giving back
If you've been following, you know that the two themes of my blog are romance literature and breast cancer. There is rarely a time when the two intertwine, but I recently learned that you can raise donations for any breast cancer research when you buy any of my books.
Itโs estimated that 231,840 cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in the U.S. alone during 2015. Many nonprofits devoted to breast cancer research and treatment, like National Breast Cancer Coalition, Susan G. Komen, ...
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