🌀Mood: Disappointed. Exhausted. Resilient. Relieved. Still moving. The afternoon, after my first stem cell collection, I got the call. The one we had all been waiting for. The goal was to collect 8–10 million stem cells in one day. My team felt confident. I felt confident. We were rallying around the idea of “one and done.” So when the phone rang, I answered with hope. … Continue reading 35 – Not One and Done
🌀Mood: Triggered. Resilient. Competitive. Determined. Faith-filled. This week felt like my Olympics. Not the glamorous kind. The gritty kind. The kind where your body is pushed to its limits and your mindset becomes just as important as your muscles. The Hickman Line Before stem cells could be collected, I needed a Hickman line placed. For those who don’t know, a Hickman line is a central … Continue reading 34 – Going for Gold
🌀Mood: Supported, Loved, Humbled, Comforted, Transitioning, Carried My cousin arrived on Tuesday February 17th. And with her arrival, the apartment changed. Up until then, this season had felt very focused and contained — appointments, work, quiet evenings, and a lot of internal processing. Work had been a helpful distraction, something to pour my energy into while waiting for transplant to begin. But when she walked … Continue reading 33 – The Caregiver Arrives
🌀Mood: Thorough. Evaluated. Protected. Prepared. Strengthened. Intentional. If you think a stem cell transplant is just about cancer, you would be wrong. Before they give you high-dose chemotherapy, they test everything. Heart.Lungs.Kidneys.Liver.Infectious disease panels.Chest X-rays.EKGs.Pulmonary function tests.Dental clearance.Vein checks.And yes — even a full gynecology exam. No stone goes unturned. And honestly? That’s comforting. The Body Audit This week wasn’t just about my PET scan … Continue reading 32 – No Stone Goes Unturned
🌀Mood: Miraculous. Positioned. Grateful. Strategic. Steady This week, I received words I will never forget. “No active myelomatous disease.” On my PET scan — the imaging that detects metabolically active cancer cells — nothing lit up. No new lesions.No active bone marrow infiltration.No tumors outside the bone. In medical language, this is called a Complete Metabolic Response (CMR). In regular human language? It means the … Continue reading 31 – A Miracle, and the Green Light
🌀Mood: Focused, Brave, Grounded, Curious After everything it took to get here, I wanted just one more night in my own bed. So instead of heading to Seattle Wednesday night, I woke up at 4:00 a.m. Thursday morning, packed the last of my things, and made the early drive north to Pete Gross before traffic. When I pulled into my assigned parking spot, I discovered … Continue reading 30 – Testing Begins
🌀Mood: Chaotic, Disoriented, Determined, Tender, Held I haven’t posted in a little while — not because I didn’t want to, but because these last two weeks have tested me in ways I wasn’t prepared for. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. There were moments when I honestly didn’t know if I was going to make it to Seattle in time for my stem cell transplant. The ER… Again … Continue reading 29 – The Storm Before Seattle
🌀Mood: overloaded, preparing, frustrated, holding on I have a date. February 5th. It’s the official start of my stem cell transplant journey. And now that it’s real, everything else is flooding in. I thought setting the date would feel like crossing a finish line — or at least reaching a clear checkpoint. Instead, it feels like someone opened the floodgates. The Insurance Loop That Won’t … Continue reading 28 – I Have a Date
🌀Mood: disoriented, self-advocating, realigning, hopeful I was still sitting in the infusion chair. Still trying to absorb what my oncologist had just told me — that I hadn’t actually graduated, that I was only halfway to zero, that everything I thought was happening next was now on pause. And then the phone rang. It was the transplant scheduling department at Fred Hutch.They were calling to … Continue reading 27 – Half Way There, Not Quite Yet
🌀Mood: Sober. Grounded. Clear-eyed. Emotionally heavy. When my husband and I walked into the transplant consultation at Fred Hutch, we still thought this might be a choice. We’d been told that freezing my stem cells and delaying the transplant was a possible path — maybe I’d stay on the treatment I was already responding so well to, and revisit the transplant later. It wasn’t ideal, … Continue reading 26 – If I Want to Live…
My Anchor Holds 