🌀Mood: Fragile. Adjusting. Honest. Rebuilding. I’m out of the hospital. And while that feels like a big step…this part of the journey is still far from easy. There’s this idea that once you come out of the valley, things start to feel normal again. That’s not really how it works. It’s more like… your body is slowly trying to find its way back. When I … Continue reading 43 – What Recovery Really Looks Like
🌀Mood: Relieved. Worn down. Grateful. Rebuilding. I got out of the hospital a few days ago, on Day 15. Ten days inside… and it felt like an eternity. At one point, I told someone I felt like a caged animal.No real sleep. Constant interruptions. Just trying to get through each hour. So being back at the apartment feels like a breath of fresh air. But … Continue reading 42 – Out of the Valley
After melphalan cleared the garden, the rebuilding could begin. Two days ago, melphalan cleared the garden.Today, my own stem cells came home. It’s taken me a few days to write this. After two days of stem cell infusions, I needed the rest. Now that I have a little more energy, I want to share what Day 0 was like. Day 0 at Fred Hutch started … Continue reading 39 — Day 0: The Beginning of the Rebuild
🌀Mood: Courage, Uncertainty, Preparation, Resolve Yesterday I met a different version of myself in the mirror. Today I began the treatment that will rebuild my body from the inside out. Today was melphalan day. Melphalan is the chemotherapy given before a stem cell transplant. Its job is simple, but powerful: wipe out the blood-forming stem cells living inside my bone marrow so new, healthy ones … Continue reading 38 – Melphalan Day — The Clearing Begins
🌀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
My Anchor Holds 