🌀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: 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: 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…
🌀 Mood: Grateful, quiet, grounded There’s a lot swirling right now. My numbers are improving.I’m moving from weekly chemo to every-other-week.I’m meeting with the transplant team at Fred Hutch.And I know there are hard days ahead. But before I step into whatever’s next, I want to pause.To name what I’m thankful for. Thankful for Healing, Even When It’s Slow I started this journey with advanced, … Continue reading 25 – Thankful: A Pause Before the Next Chapter
🌀 Mood: Bittersweet, reflective, steady, vulnerable My oncologist looked at me with a big smile and said, “You’re graduating.” Graduating? It took a moment to sink in. After next week, I’ll no longer be coming in for weekly treatments. My M-protein level is now at 0.08—a number I’ve been working toward for months. With that, I move to every other week instead of every week. … Continue reading 24 – Chemo #14 – Graduation Day
My Anchor Holds 