🌀Mood: Raw. Restless. Drained. Surviving. They call this part of the process “the valley.” I knew it was coming.They prepared me for it.Days 4 through 14… the hardest stretch. But knowing about it and living it are two very different things. The valley isn’t just about feeling sick.It’s about being completely emptied out. By the time I was admitted to the hospital, my body was … Continue reading 41 – What the Valley Really Is
🌀Mood: Drained. Foggy. Fragile. Enduring. I haven’t written in a while.Around Day 5, things shifted.I ended up being admitted into the hospital because I couldn’t keep my medications down. Every time I tried to swallow pills, my stomach would cramp and I would vomit. It got to the point where it just wasn’t sustainable anymore—physically or mentally.So now everything goes through my Hickman line. It’s … Continue reading 40 – Day 5 to Day 11: 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: Reflective, Grounded, Bittersweet, Exposed, Grateful, Hopeful (I’m writing this on my birthday, February 28th. By the time you’re reading it, the date will have passed — but I wanted to capture how today feels while I’m in it.) We came home to Olympia the day before my birthday. I woke up in my own bed this morning — something that already felt like a … Continue reading 36 – The Space Between Collection and Rebuild
🌀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: 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: 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
My Anchor Holds 