February 2012
10 posts
Mel-a-NO-MAS! →
Please join me in the fight against cancer on May 5th, and every day.
My 15 minutes/100 words of fame →
Shopping lists - then, and now
It’s funny how quickly your life can change, in many ways. I generally consider myself a creature of habit. Living alone I have found myself very methodical in the way I do things. Strange because I also consider myself to be a spontaneous person. Is it possible to be free-willed AND have OCD?
I also digress…where was I going with this.
Ah! Yes! Change!
I find it interesting how...
Mental health day
Irony: taking a mental health day from work and having to go for an MRI.
At least we now know that cancer isn’t giving me a stroke!
Also ironic is that my doc asked me to go for an MRI due to a 4-day headache I was having. Thanks to that loud-a** machine I think I’m going to have a headache for the next 4 days.
3 tags
“SLIP on SUNGLASSES
SLOP on SUNSCREEN
SLAP on a HAT
Protect your...”
1 tag
I am a butt head.
No. Literally.
I am not an asshole. I am a butt head.
A funny thing happened on the way to the operating room…
Before the surgery my surgeon explained that he would have to cut a deep 2-inch margin to remove the tumor (cancerous mole) on my head and they would need to cover it with a skin graft. As I’m a “young woman” he promised the graft site would be somewhere...
How are you feeling?
Ahhhhh the infamous phrase. It’s also the 3 dreaded words that any, or at least this “cancer patient”, hates hearing.
I put “cancer patients” in parentheses because I don’t see myself as one. I see myself as a 29-year-old woman with a great job, amazing family and friends, (at times) questionable morals, a slight obsession with The Big Bang Theory, and really...
gypsies5 asked: keep writing!!!
January 2012
4 posts
Things that I miss (in no particular order)*
Apples
Cheese
Sex
Wine
Jeans
Ice cream
Innocence
*These will one day be mine again (I’m especially hoping the 3rd bullet down) and are merely missing from my life thanks to a side effect of my treatment (see pic below - no I’m not pregnant I have colitis that warrants dietary restrictions. However, I did name my “baby” Steve). Sadly when you have, or had, a cancer...
Remission: It was fun while it lasted.
There are so many things that happen in your 20’s. For most, those years contain graduating college, getting a job, falling in and out of love (with yourself or someone else), making all the right and wrong decisions, and looking forward to what life may bring.
One aspect of my 20’s that I didn’t expect to tackle amongst the chaos of adopting adulthood was getting cancer. Twice.
Here’s a timeline...
Melanoma. Isn't that just skin cancer?
Yeah. And the atomic bomb was “just a bomb”.
I’m not here to give melanoma a bad rep or make cancer any worse than it can be. I’m here to humanize it. Give it a face. A name. (Un)fortunately I have the priveldge of doing so.
I’m Lauren. I’m 29 and I’ve had melanoma twice in 2 years. Both times (one being currently) in the most random of bodily locations...
“Count your smiles instead of your tears. Count your courage instead of your...”