3 Things Cancer Taught A Survivor, Caregiver & Couple
Katie and I were recently invited to participate in Texas Oncology Foundation’s Survive & Thrive webinar series. A few highlights include: Why cameramen were shooting video behind us. *Spoiler alert* Real Housewives of Cancer. Why communicating cancer doesn’t seem so bad when the alternative is being married with children. The three things we learned as […]
My CML Journey: A Timeline
Hi! We just wrapped up a video shoot for Takeda, the pharmaceutical company that makes my targeted therapy. I’ll get to that in a minute. Prior to the shoot, the production company asked if I could send them a timeline of my CML journey. I started working on it, pulling together the different pieces of […]
Getting Married After Cancer – Guilt Is Part Of The Diagnosis
Before proposing to Katie, I couldn’t stop thinking about how the proposal would align with my cancer diagnosis and the uncertainty of my future. Katie and I had been dating long-distance for two-and-a-half years while she attended graduate school in San Antonio. Even though I was about to start a clinical trial for chronic myeloid leukemia, I was […]
Discovering The Nature Of Hope
“Your field vision test hasn’t shown any improvement. There’s a possibility that the vision impairment is permanent. Your eye pressure was extremely high for days before you came in, and there’s no telling how long it was symptomatic before you even noticed. We can give you another week to strategize a plan for work, but […]
Life-Changing Perspectives
I wrote this article for MD Anderson’s Cancerwise blog. You can view it here. I’ve fought leukemia in one way or another for the past six years. For the first four, I pushed my diagnosis aside in an effort to be carefree, and enjoy the freedoms available to those who don’t have cancer. I walked away. I made a mistake. […]
Emotional Health Begins With Communication
A couple of hours after I received a call from my doctor, notifying me of my leukemia, I walked into my house. There sat Josh, my younger brother, in the chair opposite the front door and my dad on the couch immediately to the right. I could tell by my brother’s tears that word had already […]
Life Is A Marathon
I’m not much of a runner. My only experience running a timed event was during a junior high track meet. I ran the equivalent of one lap, or 400 meters. It didn’t turn out so well. I was responsible for the last leg of a 1600 meter relay so by the time I was passed […]
Revealing Sufficiency Amidst Hardships
During the past couple of days, I’ve had the opportunity to catch up with work colleagues (who likely visualized me on a death bed at MD Anderson.) Repeating the details of the past four months has been mentally exhausting, but to connect with others who have experienced similar trials has been refreshing. Yesterday, I talked […]
Back To Work
Today is my first day back to work since I left to begin a clinical trial at MD Anderson on January 16th. To summarize the past three and a half months, I experienced an increase in toxicity during the first trial for a t315i leukemia mutation, fought through muscle weakness and nausea, lost some of […]
An Update on My Treatment: So Far, So Good
I’ve been on Ponatinib, a clinical trial drug that fights the t315i leukemia mutation I have, for one month so far. Before I began treatment, I was off of medication altogether for three weeks. The first test showed an abnormally high white blood cell count. To simplify things, this is how leukemia presents itself. After […]