Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light. – Dylan Thomas Some days, I sit back and think, “If you had told pre-cancer Laura what her life would look like post-cancer, she wouldn’t have believed you.” Today is one of those days. In 2015, I made my first… Continue reading Sept
“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.” – Hazrat Inayat Khan With the dawn of a new year, and my next scan date quickly approaching, I’ve been in reflection mode. March will make 10 years since… Continue reading Rebirth
“Hang on, hang on when all is shattered, when all your hope is gone. Who knows how long? There is a twilight, a nighttime and a dawn.” – Guster, “Hang On” It was June 2016. I had just been released from a ten-day stay at UCLA after the most grueling surgery of my life. I… Continue reading Lemonade
I received a letter today that I knew was coming, but I’m not going to lie – it still hurts reading it. My beloved oncologist – Dr. V – has retired after over 40 years of practice for medical reasons. Dr. V has been more than a doctor to me. I showed up in his… Continue reading The Oncologist Who Saved Me
“I’ve seen Jesus play with flames / In a lake of fire that I was standing in” – Sturgill Simpson, “Turtles All the Way Down“ Sturgill was singing about drugs when he saw Jesus, but to be fair, I was on copious amounts of Dilaudid when I saw him, so we’re probably even. Aside from… Continue reading six
I come from resilient people. My maternal ancestors were forced out of Nova Scotia as part of Le Grand Derangement, when the British “shipped our Acadian ancestors down here to die,” as my mother used to say. She wasn’t wrong. Le Grand Derangement was an act of ethnic cleansing, a genocide. It’s estimated that half… Continue reading Ça c’est bon, sha.
My apologies to St. Dymphna. She is actually the patron saint of depression and anxiety. But, I might be giving her a run for her money these days. COVID isn’t helping, but it’s not just about a viral infection that could kill me, what with the damage to my lungs from the tumors that grew… Continue reading Laura, The Patron Saint of Scanxiety.
The last few weeks have been a roller coaster to say the least. I’ve always been brutally honest here, and I don’t intend to stop now. When I stopped Cabo in April, I knew it would be a shock for my body. I had lasted three and a half years on the drug, which isn’t… Continue reading The Gift That Keeps On Giving
It’s been 3 years and six months since I started Cabometyx. The medication that not only saved my life, but gave me time I had no right to expect or deserve, if you asked papillary renal cell carcinoma. I joined the PAPMET clinical trial as one of its very first patients, and was randomly assigned… Continue reading Turn The Page
‘Twas a few days before Thanksgiving, and a boogeyman was lurking in my chest. What, that’s not how this story goes? It WAS the Saturday before Thanksgiving though as I lay in bed watching TV with my husband when I suddenly had sharp pains in my left rib. “That was weird,” I thought. I actually… Continue reading The Rougarou
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