“When will your treatment be finished?” I still get this question a lot from friends and family.
For the past few years, the answer has not changed much. My guess is that people forget my answer so they keep asking. I understand the curiosity.
Photo by L. Laguna
Here is the answer:
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On February 24, 2022, I celebrated the two-year anniversary of my mastectomy in the post More Than Transactional. It was only after this post that I found out that Russia had invaded Ukraine. NPR posted Photos: The sobering cost of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine. The New York Times has live updates on the Russia-Ukraine War.
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I have not written on this blog for almost four months because I was preparing for, underwent, and have been recovering from reconstructive surgery. I was waiting for a moment to be inspired to write again, but maybe inspiration is too strong of a word.
When you are working to fulfill your basic needs, engaging in an activity that you normally love is not always the best thing. Sometimes when you try to do something and encounter restrictions or discomfort, reconnecting with the activity becomes more work than leisure.
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The following text is a post I shared with friends. Originally, it included a photo of me at the hospital, waiting for my mastectomy. In the photo, I was lying in a bed reclined back at about a 45 degree angle. My body was snugly tucked under white sheets, and my head was propped on a matching pillow. A light blue bouffant cap contained my thick, long dark brown-black hair. I wrote it this morning to reflect on the anniversary of my mastectomy. It goes like this:
Continue readingToday I called an airline for a refund on a flight I had scheduled prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was quite an ordeal.
In November 2019, I bought tickets to travel to Austin, TX, in May 2020. I had no clue that I would be diagnosed with breast cancer weeks later, how expensive cancer be as I worked to improve and maintain my quality of life, how challenging it would be to interact with medical providers and loved ones, how much pressure it is to take care of others even when I needed care, how the COVID-19 pandemic would intersect with my cancer and fertility treatment, how emotional freezing my eggs would be, and how George Floyd’s murder would place the United States’ racism under a magnifying glass in ways that reminded me of the ways others and myself have experienced racism in this country.
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This summer, I had an appointment at my hospital. I had a negative interaction with a medical provider. It was not the worst in the world; it was not the best either. Initially, I decided not to share my feedback with the hospital, but I later opted to call and share my experience with its staff. My intention was to take a developmental approach to the situation. As the environment of this country has evolved in the past couple months, I felt responsible for doing what I can to make it better. The following is a statement I wrote as part of my application for the hospital’s advisory council for patients and families.
Continue readingYesterday I caught you up to speed with my life in Lunch with Lindsay: Schools During a Pandemic and Allyship During a Movement. Today I am continuing to discuss what else has been on my mind so I am sharing with you my most recent video above on health in the workforce, race in New England, and vacations in the pandemic.
Continue readingI didn’t sleep well last night. Today I will start a new segment of treatment for breast cancer, and I feel emotional about how my body, spirit, and mind will respond to treatment. I’m crying as I write this because I’m both nervous of the effects and also grateful to have access to healthcare. With that said, RACISM IS WORSE THAN CANCER. In the past few days, racism has caused me more sorrow than cancer.
When I found out I had cancer, nobody asked me what I did wrong or how bad the cancer was before showing me compassion and wanting justice in my healthcare. When someone experiences racism, there is always someone who needs to evaluate how bad the situation is before determining if the victim is “worthy” of compassion and justice.
Continue readingWhen I was a sophomore in college, I took a social issues theatre class. I was the youngest person in it. Everyone else was a junior or senior. A couple of them were even nontraditional students (in this context, adult learners), and one of them already had a kid. That wasn’t a norm at my Big Ten school, where students ages 18-22 were the standard for undergrads.
It was an intimate class. There were less than 10 of us, and that was atypical for a public university with tens of thousands of students. I liked it because I got to know everyone by name. Given the themes of the course and the class size itself, we were able to engage in profound discussions that I didn’t normally have in lectures with hundreds of classmates.
One of the people I got to know in the social issues theatre course was Lawrence Haynes. I performed in one of the plays he wrote for class. Generally, I found him to be a warm, welcoming, and introspective person. He was kind to everyone.
He graduated the same year we took social issues theatre together, but we stayed connected through Facebook, which was relatively new at the time.
Yesterday morning, I went on Facebook to post in a support group for young breast cancer patients and survivors. I got connected to this group Young Survival Coalition at the recommendation of another survivor shortly after I was diagnosed. After reading the website, I signed up for their Facebook group as soon as I realized they had one.
Since I joined the online group, I’ve mostly read other people’s stories, comments, questions, fears, and victories in their battles with breast cancer. Sometimes their fears have amplified mine, but their hopes also have given me hope when mine felt low.
As a newbie to breast cancer, I got to learn about terminology, resources, and other issues that I otherwise wouldn’t have known had I not joined that online group. More knowledge can be both disconcerting and comforting; therefore, I have to be very mindful of how I interact with the page. Overall though I find the benefits to outweigh any discomfort I feel from reading patients’ and survivors’ challenges and fears. We all need an outlet to share our unfiltered thoughts, and that forum serves that purpose.
This online support group for young breast cancer survivors is the opposite of content that I find highly annoying online, and that content is inspiration porn.
There’s nothing like inspiration porn to make me roll my eyes, especially as I undergo cancer treatment during the global pandemic known as COVID-19, or the Coronavirus.
Unfiltered Snapshot 