August 10,2023 Or, a collection of thoughts…. My brain has been in a form of dense fog lately. How my day began yesterday was a great example of brain fog and how little things can sometimes throw a wrench in one’s day. I often remind myself of how lucky I am to even be here […]

July 12, 2023   Or metastatic disease…. So I’m a cancer patient with a long history of migraine. A cancer patient who has been prescribed (and taken!) anastrozole, an estrogen inhibitor, for my Estrogen Receptor + type of breast cancer, for the last four years. I have teased my oncologist that despite not loving all […]

June 8, 2023 10 years ago today….   I was at a National conference in Chicago presenting on improving healthcare quality and safety through development of interprofessional teams … This was a photo I took during that trip: the Tiffany dome at the Chicago Public Library—   The symbolism of this swirling artwork is not […]

Feb. 2, 2023 Cancer is still part of my life, as evidenced by my ongoing follow-up appointments with my medical oncologist and my radiation oncologist, along with my daily medication regimen. Even though they are now at 6 month intervals, I have to return to my cancer patient role each time. With everything else that […]

January 24, 2023 It was a trying day today. So trying that I needed to cry. I’m highly aware of the need to allow all the emotions as they arise. And how allowing moves us toward rebalancing and healing much more quickly than we may experience when we don’t allow our emotions to “just be.”Repressing […]

Nov. 26, 2022 This week was Thanksgiving. It was a touching reminder of all the things to be grateful for in the midst of our current challenges. It was also a full blown demonstration of how conflicting emotions can exist at the same time. Sadness coupled with joy, reflections on past holidays and missing departed […]

November 16, 2022 Crying every day is my “new normal.” Living with and through the endless grief of watching my spouse’s increasingly rapid deterioration from Parkinson’s is beyond anything I’ve ever had to cope with so far in this life. There are so many conflicting emotions, it is hard to process all of them at […]

October 21, 2022 Today was my brother’s mother-in-law’s funeral. She was known to me as Yia Yia Teddie, an accomplished Greek mom and grandmother. She was 92 years old. She left behind four daughters (one of whom is my sister-in-law) and their families, grandchildren and great grandchildren, most of whom gathered together yesterday and today […]

October 4, 2022 Today feels heavy… I’m sitting with my emotions as I wait for the train that will take me to my radiation oncology follow up appointment today. While I am happy to be catching up again with my radiation oncologist, I am decidedly conflicted about officially returning to the role of cancer patient. […]

Sept. 8, 2022 This week … has been filled with reflection. Sometimes somber, sometimes joyful, always heartfelt. I’ve been thinking a lot about loss lately, specifically about the loss of my parents. And in so doing, I’ve encountered two very different forms of grief. My mother was only two years older than I am now […]

June 19, 2022 It’s today’s feeling that I just can’t seem to shake. (I know, I know—ALLOW. ) I don’t want this feeling though. (Which is precisely why I must allow it….) This is the hard work of recognizing, processing, and managing emotions. It occurred to me that this has some relationship with the work […]

May 2, 2022 This week was the fourth (!) anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. In so many ways it’s hard to believe it’s been that long. The memories of that day and the days, weeks, months, years of treatment and recovery are still fresh. And so much has happened since then. I’ve lost so many […]