Tag: breast cancer journey

A Millennial’s Guide to Breast Cancer: And So It Goes

For my fortieth birthday, I bought myself a five-year journal. I’d gone back and forth on it for a while, because I’m not exactly a daily journal writer, but I figured I could make myself do a few sentences each day. It would be fun to look back on things and see what happened, even with the mundane stuff.

Before I ordered it I did think to myself that it was a bit of an optimistic gift for myself: This means I need to live another 5 years, ha ha ha.

It didn’t help that I was diagnosed with laryngitis on my birthday and we had to put off celebrating until I felt better. It didn’t feel like an auspicious start. But I kept up with daily updates, not forcing myself to fill up all the given space if I didn’t feel like it, for longer than I thought I would. My initial scans and biopsy are in there, and the surgery. Later in the summer, though, it felt like it was just another “Felt terrible today. No other updates.” And other such things that I actually don’t want to remember, thanks.

Fast forward to October.

I started these blog posts at a very low time, actually. In October 2024 I’d finally (finally, finally!) signed with an agent after four years of querying. In October 2025 my now-former agent released me from contractual obligations. (That’s the official wording. Honestly it feels like being dumped and, once again, told that I’m not good enough.)

The thing is, I’d focused on my writing and presumed future publications as my reason to get through treatment. In my lowest moments, I clung to the idea that I finally would be published and in bookstores. That was my reason to push through, and then … suddenly … that reason didn’t exist anymore. Where the heck was I supposed to go from there when my path forward was just dynamited?

So I started writing these posts. I outlined twelve things I felt like I was able to talk about now, and figured six weeks was actually a pretty long stretch of time. There’s a lot to say about being diagnosed with cancer, after all, and I’ve written about 18,000 words on the subject. That’s way past a short story and into novella territory. But now I’ve come to the end of those twelve ideas, and I don’t think I’m ready to write about some of the other things yet.

They’re still too nebulous.

Some day I’ll write about how the bad days now feel even worse, even though they’re better, because I’m sooooo close to being back to normal. The bad days remind me that hey, I had cancer, and no, things aren’t normal anymore. It’s just not fair.

I’ll write about the weird compartmentalization that means I forget that I had cancer, even though I’m taking medication for it daily. The incisions still hurt from time to time, and the scars are obvious, but otherwise I try to ignore it … unless it gets stuck in my head and I dwell on it.

I’ll look back on this first holiday season after my diagnosis and maybe have an answer as to whether this is normal “getting back to life after cancer” or if the holidays themselves actually add to the emotional tornado. There’s no way of knowing how bad things would be if I hadn’t had that mammogram, and the chances of me having died by now without a diagnosis are slim (breast cancer is usually slow-growing), but I can’t help but think these things. The what ifs? run in herds.

Someday—I hope—I’ll also be able to tell you exactly when you feel like you’re actually past the cancer and not just waiting for the next bad news. Yeah, that’s a pretty big hope. I don’t know if that will ever happen, but I won’t even have my first post-treatment mammogram until next spring. I didn’t know I had cancer before, so there’s no way for me to be sure I don’t have it now.

That’s also wrapped up in this idea that I shy away from thinking of myself as a “survivor.” Like yes, I’m still here, but have I won? Is it really over? And why does it feel like it’s the treatment I had to survive, not the cancer itself?

I’m sure there’s also a whole essay behind saying memento vivere instead of the more common memento mori, but right now I feel like it’s so obvious that, if you don’t get it, I can’t explain it. That means I’m still too close to really write about it.

So the main thing is, it’s not over.

I’m still reminded of my cancer every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I’m still negotiating the side effects of the medication I have to be on to reduce the chances of the cancer ever coming back. (I’m still doing gymnastics to word sentences that way because there’s no guarantee it will completely prevent the cancer from coming back.)

Since my own diagnosis, two people I know and one friend of a friend have been diagnosed with breast cancer. Sharing stories is remembering, too, and dealing with the conflicting emotions between the memory of how bad it was with the idea that I’m still so lucky. This is a thing that happened to me, and parts of it are still happening, and it’s not like I just “can’t let it go.” It’s simply not over. There will be more.

I hope you have a wonderfully warm and bright holiday season with those you love. Memento vivere, and find the joy everywhere it exists.

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A Millennial’s Guide to Breast Cancer: Write What You Know

I didn’t start reading Stephen King until the summer after college. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I can only remember one time when my parents intervened. I wanted to read Pet Sematary (it had a kitty on the cover!) but I was in second grade, so they suggested that maybe I put that one off for a while. There’s no real reason I put it off for so long, but it generally surprises people that I got such a late start.

In ‘Salem’s Lot, Catholic priest Father Callahan visits another character in the hospital and spends some time musing about how his parishioners usually react to sudden medical news like cancer, a heart attack, or stroke. Father Callahan’s experience tells him that these hospital visits are usually with someone who feels betrayed by their own body, but they can’t get away from the betrayer like they could if it was a backstabbing friend. It’s a dark assessment from a priest who’s losing his faith but who, at that point, has only really observed such things from the outside.

King was 28 when it ‘Salem’s Lot was published, and although he had personal experience with Callahan’s alcoholic, he was still decades way from the car accident that turned him into the patient. Characters like Edgar Freemantle in Duma Key (one of my favorites, and sadly not as well known) clearly come from his own lived experience, but Callahan’s dour assessment comes as an outsider.

Even though I was in my early twenties when I read it, though, it stuck with me. You can bet that scene ran through my mind after my own diagnosis.

Callahan’s not my favorite character

At least, not in ‘Salem’s Lot. He shows up again in The Dark Tower series, and although he’s not exactly young in ‘Salem’s Lot, this second appearance gives him more depth and complexity. The original Callahan is a bit whiny, wishing he had a true battle to fight for his faith. It’s one of those “Be careful what you ask for” situations, and Callahan’s one of King’s tragic characters in his initial arc. When he goes to visit the sick character in the hospital, he hasn’t really been tested himself. He means well, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Callahan’s looking from the outside in.

Even though I didn’t start reading King until I was older than most fans, his works are still a major component of my life. I’m the co-chair for the Stephen King area of the National Popular Culture Association conference, and I’ve written multiple chapters and two books about his works. I’ve got all his books in paper, digital, and audio formats. I’m most definitely a Constant Reader (but do not claim to be his number-one fan). Granted, King’s brand of horror isn’t exactly what you want to relate to in your daily life, anyway, but my mind automatically goes to make connections, not just from one of his books to the next, but between what he writes and what I experience.

To be fair, it’s not just King. When I was very young I read Eighty-Eight Steps to September and cried my eyes out when the main character’s little brother died from leukemia. Jan Marino just kind of paved the way for a Lurlene McDaniel phase later on. If you’ve never read one of her young adult novels, they’re full of teens going through incredibly traumatic medical diagnoses. Lots of her characters die. If the main character isn’t diagnosed with something, then their love interest is.

As we’re growing up, that’s our usual experience with intense medical issues: whatever we see or read in the media. And, let’s face it, a lot of those stories end with death. I remember my mom explaining to me that Eighty-Eight Steps to September was set far in the past (okay I think it was the fifties, but I’m trying to remember something I read in like 1991, so maybe that just felt like the far past to me at the time) and little kids don’t die from cancer like that anymore. That’s not quite true, but she had to say something to a six-year-old crying over a fictional character.

But that’s what fiction has taught me: that kind of diagnosis is an utter betrayal, once you can’t get away from, and one that’s going to end tragically.

Life imitates art?

At this point I think the most unrealistic thing about Father Callahan’s assessment is that it means his parishioners had to speed-run the stages of grief. I still have times when the thought “I had cancer” just doesn’t make sense. One of my friends said he mother-in-law sometimes gets hit with it, and her diagnosis was five years ago: “Huh. That happened. I lived through all that.” If I’m going to feel betrayed by my body, then I need to actually internalize what happened to my body.

And I also get that it’s weird to think that I should feel something just because some author somewhere put it in one of his character’s heads. It doesn’t even have to be what King himself thought back then, because he usually writes about entire towns and has plenty of opportunities to explore different points of view. It’s just a scene that was so vivid, something Callahan dwelt on in his own mind for quite a while, that it stuck. When you have cancer or a heart attack or a stroke, you feel like your body’s betrayed you.

I’ve actually spent a lot of time thinking about it. To my mind, the cancer isn’t a betrayal by my body, because it’s not me. It’s like a little mutant invasion. (Now y’all might also need to reassess how well you think I’m coping. The journey’s a long one.)

The other side of things—the Lurlene McDaniel side of things—means trying to work the whole “It’s statistically unlikely I’m going to die from this” thing into any initial announcement. Cancer is a big scary word, and the people who care about you want to know how bad it is. If caught early, invasive ductal carcinoma has a 5-year survival rate of 99%. I’m too old to be a Lurlene McDaniel heroine, anyway, but the odds were in my favor.

That doesn’t mean nobody asked if I was going to die. You can kind of guess how the age of the person in question factors into things, because hey, the younger you are, the more likely it is that your only association is cancer equals death. But even calling it “breast cancer” means there are so many possibilities for how things are going to unfold. People who’ve watched loved ones on their own journeys had more questions, and maybe more worries, than others. They had a better, more personal understanding.

Wait, so should authors stop writing outside their own lived experience?

Okay, that’s a whole can of worms and there are no easy answers. When it comes to the experience of cancer patients, though … yeah, it’s still complicated. Stephen King, writing before I was born, had no idea how much that scene would stick in my head when I read it later, or how it would come back after my diagnosis. Lurlene McDaniel started writing to deal with her son’s medical diagnosis, and honestly I think she can be credited for teaching a lot of us about the different conditions she gave her characters. That’s not something the average teen can just sit down with their parents for an in-depth discussion.

I also think that these approaches come from a place of empathy. Authors can’t always write characters who are only like themselves, so they have to try to imagine all kinds of different people whose experiences and thought processes aren’t the same. Cancer and other major medical events happen in the real world, so leaving them out completely, especially over as many books as King has written, would be unrealistic. And honestly, if I’m struggling to understand my own experience, then I can’t really fault someone who’s never gone through it for writing something different than what I’m feeling. Heck, other survivors have entirely different experiences, and that doesn’t make them wrong.

In the spirit of books and scenes that maybe stuck with you longer than they should, recommend your favorite book to a friend or post about it online. Share the love for your favorite author. Read new stories, expand your horizons, and memento vivere.

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A Millennial’s Guide to Breast Cancer: The Dark Night of the Soul

A couple years ago I was on a writer’s forum and the discussion was about plotting. Somehow I mentioned that I’d never read Save the Cat Writes a Novel, and someone—a complete stranger—scoffed back that we have to learn the craft. After a moment of internal debate, I responded that some of us had started “the craft” before Save the Cat was even a thing.

It began as a screenwriting tool to help map the major beats of a project. The idea is that, if you follow this basic story outline, you’ll write a blockbuster (or a bestseller). If you think those beats look a lot like the hero’s journey, well, what can I tell you. There are only six plots.

One of the Save the Cat beats is called “The dark night of the soul.” It comes after the “all is lost” moment, and it lines up with Campbell’s heroic arc: the main character appears to lose everything and goes through a final trial before the ultimate confrontation. It’s the absolute lowest point but, because it’s fiction, you know a) that it don’t get lower, and b) that the hero will ultimately win.

Cancer doesn’t come with those guarantees.

One day second at a time

Radiation doesn’t have as many side effects as chemotherapy, check. Advances mean that I was able to complete my therapy in five days, check. But it certainly wasn’t a frolic through a field of wildflowers.

I know a lot of things now that I really could’ve done without. Thanks to my ink dealer, I have recent enough data to know that a healing tattoo doesn’t feel as bad as radiation burns. I also know that using the same ointment on said tattoo that you used on said radiation burns gives too many flashbacks. That smell will forever be tied to last August.

I also know that standing still takes more energy than walking. If you think I’m full of it, then you’ve never been that tired. Spoonies get me. How tired is that? Well. It’s too tired to even keep sitting up, but it’s not the kind of tired that means you can nap. It means you lie there, eyes closed, and you feel every passing second as in individual thing. Even playing those audiobooks I mentioned last week doesn’t always help. That takes a certain level of concentration, and concentration takes energy.

And this is also too tired for reading paper books, by the way. If you’re too tired to sit up, you’re too tired to hold a book or a Kindle in bed, and keeping your eyes open so you can see the words? Hah. Too tired for that, too. It’s the sort of tired you would dearly, desperately love to sleep through, but you can’t sleep.

For me, the lowest point (I confidently type now more than four months after my surgery) was the Sunday during my radiation treatments. I had the first three Wednesday-Friday, so the weekend was “off” before my final two appointments. Saturday wasn’t good, but Sunday was “lie in bed and wonder why the hell you’re putting yourself through this” bad. Seriously, it’s a mindfuck when you felt fine and it’s the treatment that makes you feel like crap. (My mom doesn’t like it when I swear, but le mot juste is le mot juste.)

And the thing is, in those dark nights of the soul, it’s just you. There’s not really anything anyone else can do in that moment, because nothing’s the right thing, anyway.

All that’s left is you

And that brings us to one of my favorite tweets:

During the whole cancer experience—not just the dark nights of the soul—I found myself relying on past experiences. I’m not particularly good at meditation, but I’ve tried it before, so I could count and do the 4-7-8 breathing technique. I can’t say for sure that it really helped with relaxation, but it gave me something to focus on.

I’ve already sung the praises of Dan Stevens and his audiobooks, but comfort media really comes in handy when you don’t have the energy for something new. You don’t have to follow along with plot twists because you already know them. I’m not saying I could recite the entirety of And Then There Were None, but that’s one I could play while I lay in bed, not sleeping, because I could drift off and tune back in. It could run, and mark the passing time, but if I missed a part, I wouldn’t really miss it. (Did you know that clocks are pretty much everywhere in hospitals? There’s got to be a study about the visual marking of the passage of time in those kinds of situations.)

There’s also all sorts of emotional regulation that has to happen when you’re going through cancer. You don’t want to explode and alienate the people who are helping you through it, and maybe you really just don’t want to break down and cry in front of someone. In the moment it’s hard to explain exactly why it sucks, because there’s nothing specific. There’s not a pain right here that you can point to, and on top of it, you’re probably not sleeping well, so your thoughts are fuzzy. It just sucks, in a very general kind of suck, but there’s nothing you can do to get out of it except pass the time.

This is why you’ll want to lay in the comfort foods and make sure your favorite clothes are handy. You’ve got so little room for discomfort outside of the stuff you just can’t avoid, and so little patience. Your world gets very small when you have cancer and all the energy you have left is seriously put into survival.

It’s not even glamorous survival. You’re not a prepper, laying in stores in case the world goes through an upheaval. You’re not in a zombie movie, defending your home and loved ones against a visible, common threat. You’re not in the death zone on Everest, focused on your goal of reaching the summit and standing on top of the world. You’re just … breathing, and trying to convince yourself that it’s honestly worthwhile to keep breathing.

Cancer sucks.

Sometimes what sucks about it the most is the inability to explain exactly why it sucks. You just feel cruddy, but none of the usual remedies help the way you’re used to. Seriously, I’m still betrayed by the inability to nap.

Cancer really does kind of reduce you, except in this case I mean it the way you reduce a sauce: the excess goes way and leaves you with your core. That’s what gets you through it, second by second. Nobody really prepares to get that diagnosis, but everything you do in life comes back to you in surprising ways.

Today you should remember one of your past loves and try it again. Get out the crayons—bonus if it’s the box of 64 with the built-in sharpener—and draw something colorful. Plunk out a song on the piano. Sew something small. Whatever it is, whatever your love, let it come back to you, and memento vivere.

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A Millennial’s Guide to Breast Cancer: “If There’s Anything I Can Do …”

This is the other side of the coin: after you tell someone you have cancer, their most likely response is “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” We’re not trained on what to say to bad news, and I can’t say I’ve come up with anything better. The thing is, though, that it puts all of the responsibility back onto the person at the center of the bad news.

The way I figure it, this post can go two ways. If you’ve recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, it can give you some ideas if you’re looking to plan ahead. It can also be shared with the people who say to let them know if there’s anything they can do because … well, it’s a list of things that helped me.

I will say that, sadly, having a list doesn’t always help. I made a similar Facebook post shortly after my diagnosis with some ideas and a wish list link, and a couple people apparently decided I either didn’t really mean it, or that they should get me something even more special. They said yes, of course, they saw the list … but what did I really want? So it’s not foolproof, but also, if someone you know has cancer and made a list, buy them something off it.

For clarity’s sake, none of these are sponsored items. I don’t earn or get anything if you click the links. It’s just me trying to share in the hopes that it will make someone else’s journey reasonable.

Feed me

This is a case of knowing what’s really going to help someone and their household. My husband likes cooking, so my close friends asked what they could do that wouldn’t interfere with that part of it. They didn’t want to take that away from him. I suggested gift cards for our preferred meal box, Blue Apron; Misfits Market, where we also frequently order; or to our local grocery store. We live in a very rural area, so I made sure people knew that cards to places like Walmart wouldn’t be as helpful – the closest one is still over 50 miles away. Keep in mind, too, that not every place has something like Uber Eats, although that would absolutely be useful for anyone who lives where they can order that way.

It’s also totally the time for comforting favorites. We didn’t have a local cafe, but if someone loves getting a coffee or a treat and you know their favorite spot, get them a gift card to use there. Some days even just leaving the house to go get a latte or a smoothie was worth the effort of getting ready … because it wasn’t leaving the house for another appointment. Heck, get someone a gift card for avocado toast.

Stress alone can make it difficult to eat, even outside of the side effects from treatment. I stocked up on Soylent, which is my preferred meal replacement drink. The original flavor is oaty but not as sweet as most meal replacement shakes. I needed something I could just drink and be done with when I really didn’t feel like eating, and Soylent is the one I can chug. It’s helpful to have a supply on hand for the times when nothing sounds good, but you know you’re just going to feel worse if you don’t eat.

Microwavable and other ready meals also help. I had a lot of comfort food: macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, pizza rolls … Yes, on the one hand you want to eat healthy, but on the other, seriously, some days it’s hard to eat anything at all. Sometimes you’re microwaving another breakfast burrito and chanting “Fed is best” as it spins around. Reality is what it is, and you really don’t have the time or the energy to waste wishing things were different or that you could be “better” about your diet.

Creature comforts

Get a seatbelt cover before your surgery date. Even if you’re sure your incision isn’t going to end up in seatbelt range, bodies aren’t logical. It’s really weird sometimes what will make things hurt, and you don’t want to aggravate it. Sometimes even a short encounter can have effects that last for days.

I wore a SheFit bra on my surgery day. The front closure makes for easy on and off, and I already had some for exercise, so I knew I’d get a lot of use out of them. The closure ended up irritating my incision, though, so I switched to Yana Dee bras. They’re easy to step into and comfy for all-day wear. And I’m also still wearing them four months after surgery – I tried one of my previously comfortable everyday bras once and had to take it off after an hour, so I’m willing to wait a while before trying again. It’s good to have choices, because you don’t really know what things will be like when you wake up.

I had mug warmers long before this, but they’re lovely to have when you’re not sure if you want to keep getting up and moving around. This one has three different temperature settings so you can keep your drink just as hot as you like. It’s a small thing, but in the middle of trying to just get through another minute, the small things add up.

Part of the exhaustion will mean napping at all hours of the day, so you’ll want a good eye mask. Overstimulation is also real, so consider some earplugs – this version from Loop lets you pick exactly how much ambient nose you want to hear. And speaking of bed, you’ll end up wanting different blankets: a fuzzy comforting one, and also a cooling blanket for when you start getting hot flashes. I’ve got a cooling pillowcase, too.

Time after time

If you’re not good at being patient – and who really is? – then you’ll want to prepare for all the waiting. I knew that this would be particularly difficult for me, in part because everything was happening during summer vacation. I didn’t have to worry about my job, but I also had to figure out how to fill up the time myself when I didn’t have enough concentration or energy for everything I’d planned to do.

Audiobooks are one good way for me to reassure myself that time’s passing even if it doesn’t feel like it. I started with audio versions of books that I’d already read and branched out from there. Dan Stevens is one of my favorite narrators, and his version of And Then There Were None is one of my comfort listens. I could go lie down, not sure if I was tired enough to sleep or just not awake enough to sit up anymore, hit play, and it didn’t matter if I fell asleep because I know the story so well.

The main thing I suggested for people who wanted to help was craft kits. All kinds of craft kits. I’m already a knitter and have plenty of yarn, but I branched out to brick painting, mosaics, window clings, latch hook, and more. Basically if it came all together in a kit, I’d take it. Some of them took less time and energy, so I’d pick those when I needed to feel a sense of having accomplished something. Others took longer, so I’d have to figure out a good time to put it down and pick it back up again later. Mostly I just had so many hours to fill, and I needed to do my best to take my mind off of what was coming next or why I was so darn exhausted all the time.

And of course, if all else fails, there are gift cards. Get them to a specific place, or give someone a card with money to spend wherever will help the most. This is absolutely the time to let people have little treats because hey, we’re fighting for our lives. Even if we didn’t realize we had cancer and that wasn’t making us sick, the treatment packs a huge punch.

And if you don’t have money, give time

It doesn’t even have to be much time. People sent me text to let me know they were thinking of me. They shared memes at 3am for me to find later. It’s called pebbling, and it’s a solid way to support someone. Listen, it’s morbid, but we need to know for sure that someone’s going to miss us if we die. In the darkest moments in the middle of treatment, when it’s just absolutely so freaking unfair that it’s the cure that’s making us sick, we’ll cling to whatever we can get. Send the stupid meme.

I believe that last part so much that I’m making it your action item: send a message, meme, or gif to someone you care about. Let them know you’re thinking about them even when they’re not around to remind you they exist. Memento vivere, and may they send you a 3am meme in return.

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