Image
Posted on by

Practice saying “I Have Cancer.”

You look like a new person- hi there! Thanks for reading. This site is where I vent about having an invisible disability as well as cancer. Please consider sharing this post because it’s really helpful in my shift to a writing career. Welcome back! Please tell share this post or consider buying me a cup of coffee because it will help me continue to pay bills while I shift to a part time writing career.I haven’t been able to say it out loud yet “I have cancer.” I say that I have Lymphoma. As if I don’t say it out loud, I can keep this secret from my body that it already knows? Of course now I have to say that I have Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL)/Small Lymphocytic Lymphoma(SLL), formerly two diseases that are now treated as one. And then explain that despite the word Leukemia, CLL is considered a non-Hodkins Lymphoma. And that’s after I’m done comforting the people I tell. How do you tell people you have cancer? No seriously, I’m asking you. The way I’m telling people is not working. Maybe it’s because I have an instinct to try and take care of people. I like to lead with words like “early” and “treatable” as those were the words that were given to me. Most responses fall into three general categories. “You’re gonna die but let’s pretend we don’t believe that and pray” I truly don’t give a crap whether someone thinks a person of data and science

Read the rest

Posted on by

…Lymphoma.

Lymphoma’s actually not an ugly word. Might even be described as pleasant if one had no idea what it was. It’s certainly less terrifying than what it is. Cancer. You know the odds are at least one in three that we’ll get cancer before we die. So with those stats, why does it seem so unnatural to be the person who has it? The diagnosis was a week ago Thursday, (at least it was when I first started writing this) on the 21st of January 2016. Happy New Year! I wasn’t that upset though. I’m still not. This had been a long time coming. Nothing like three months of blood tests, scans, doctor’s visits and Googling like crazy to get you used to an idea. How did I get to cancer? The Backstory Starting about a year ago, I started waking up at night covered in sweat, once a month most of the time, occasionally once a week. I was north of 40 so I figured it was early onset menopause or something. I thought nothing of it, except that it was strange that it didn’t start like a burning in my chest as it had been described to me. I thought nothing of it, that is, until the fatigue set it. But it came on slowly, around the same time as a major life change that I wasn’t expecting, that brought a lot of extra activity. Moderate fatigue is common for someone with a chronic pain condition. So even though this fatigue

Read the rest