As for me - I've never met you, I'll be damned if I let you hurt anyone that way ever again.
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Peace Pirates
Sometimes they show up dressed in the form of a lie your 3 year old self begins believing as a result of you witnessing the strongest person you know shattered from the pain of the heartache they felt. Sometimes they show up in the form of childhood illness and surgeries and trauma on your little body. Sometimes they show up in the form of the trauma from being sexually abused by a family member and you being punished for it by another family member. Sometimes they show up in the form of a spouse that cheats over and over again, even while you are pregnant. Sometimes they show up in…
- BREAST CANCER, BREAST CANCER AWARENESS, COMMUNITY, MALE BC, MEN GET BC, MENT GET BC TOO, metastatic breast cancer
A Thought On Divisions: A Day In The Life of a Stage IV Breast Cancer Patient
A Thought on Divisions October 31, 2018 By Leah Taylor I’ve been thinking about an issue I’ve noticed in the breast cancer community over the last eight years. Eight years you say? Yup, eight years. Interesting story… about 5 months after diagnosis #1 in my breast cancer story in the fall of 2010, I went to a famous breast cancer website and went to the stage IV area to ask a valid question. (I went to the stage IV area because I was told I had an 87% chance of a second primary diagnosis or a very high chance of mets, etc…due to a BRCA mutation issue.) At that time,…
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Life Does Go On: A Day in the Life of a Stage IV Cancer Patient
October 28, 2018 By Leah Taylor There is a harsh reality in all of our lives. No matter what is going on, life goes on. I have been in the hospital since last Thursday, October 24, 2018. This blog breaks my past pattern of listing hourly glimpses as it covers a few days. I spent Thursday morning in the ER getting evaluated for pain control and evaluation to determine the source of the pain. By Thursday afternoon, I was admitted to the oncology floor at Harris, Ft. Worth. My pain was at a 9 level. I was at the “crying from extreme pain” stage. Let me explain: I.am.not.a.crier. It is…
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A Day in the Life – Stage IV
By: Leah Taylor What you are about to read is my experience from September 25, 2018. It could be quite difficult to read for anyone dealing with breast cancer. It is raw and real. 6:15 a.m. I wake up. The bed leaves me stiff but I am grateful for my son and his family and their extra bed. So, I slept reasonably well considering I wasn’t in my own home. I stopped at my son’s after being released from the hospital last night. After a four day stay, it was too late to make it home without it getting dark on the drive home. I can’t drive safely after dark…
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Stand Up For Your Beliefs
By: Steve Del Gardo For the last several years, well mostly the last 5 years, I have read many articles, posts on social media on how people are imposing their beliefs on others when it involves cancer. Telling us how to use certain words to describe our cancer journey or how we should feel. Telling us not to use certain words or how we should live our lives. I have also come to realize that there are lot of negative people in our cancer circle more than the positive ones. And sometimes, well most of the time, these two forces fight against each other. IT NEEDS TO STOP! ALL…
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This Mundane World of Ours
By: Ambrose Kirkland We live in a world where people simply seem to forget things so easily now a day. They’ve become so mundane about life. No glory, gore or guts is just another day for most people. We, meaning someone like me, a man who was diagnosed with breast cancer, our world, and our lives simply change. Being diagnosed with breast cancer as a man isn’t only about going to the doctor and having mammograms. It’s about having a surgery that only a woman is supposed to have. It’s about having your breast, yes breast removed. It’s about you feeling less of a man than you already feel because…
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What Does Community Look Like To Us…
Sometimes circumstances call for you to have a conversation you NEVER wanted to have, and truthfully, if everyone treated everyone else they way they would like to be treated, these types of conversation would never come up. When we set out on creating a website to tell our truths surrounding our experiences, we never envisioned other women wanting to use our platform to share their stories, or how healing their stories would be for us. We never envisioned our connections in the medical community wanting to be a part of this. We never envisioned growth so rapid that we’d need to hire help almost immediately to keep up with the…
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The Future Doesn’t Feel That Bright
Meet Emma. A Sheffield based blogger with a penchant for gin and craft beer, travelling, snowboarding, sailing and slowing doing up her house. She’s aggressively dog friendly, and also had a brush with Breast Cancer. My fear about this cancer recurrence sneaks up on me, between my flippant Instagram posts and jokes with Drs about replacing my Sternum with Bluetooth speakers, it’s sitting there with a hefty weight attached to it. It hits me hard at the strangest moments. When I’m making a 6th birthday cake for Flash. Will I see birthdays 7, 8, 9? Or when I get followed around the internet by snowboard boots ad. Will I be…
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Debunking the Myths and Fears of Lymphedema
By: Jenni Rai, PT, CLT When I initially began working with women who had breast cancer, I was often the first person to mention “lymphedema” to them. This was in 2005, and at the time we Physical Therapists and Certified Lymphedema Therapists (at least the ones I worked with) perceived breast surgeons to find lymphedema insulting. A sort of, “I didn’t screw up! YOU don’t have LYMPHEDEMA!” Despite all of the credible research and acceptance in Europe, lymphedema seemed to be the “red headed step child” of Western Medicine, which unfortunately left patients under informed. Somewhere during the last 13 years, I’ve noticed a change. More often than not, when…
