Lung Cancer: Pictures Speak a 1,000 Words

See my recent treatment for Non Small Cell Lung Cancer, including my gnarly surgical scar to remove part of my lung. It's been a challenging 3 months in/out of the hospital.

Overwhelmed. 🙏

I'm scared, but I'm also ready to fight this cancer.

Setbacks After Heart Transplant 🙄 & Seeking Joy 💗 (Originally Published in November 2016).

I originally wrote this 4 years ago in November 2016 as a Facebook post. Trump had just been elected and I was 9 months post heart transplant and experiencing a series of setbacks: back to living 3 hours away from home, so that I could be near the transplant hospital, healing from a Grand Mal …

5 Secrets About Blogging About Death, Dying and Surviving 🤯

I thought I would take a moment to reflect on some patterns in my writing, some secrets about writing about death, dying and surviving.

My 5 Tricks of How I Deal with Pain… 💪❤🐩🏖

As a heart transplant recipient and cancer survivor, I have experienced intense physical pain and prolonged mental anguish. I have a few tricks I use to endure pain and I will share them with you. I hope it brings you some measure of relief.

I’m like a Jedi trained in Mindfulness

“You have such a good attitude,” “You’re so positive” and “I can’t believe you’re so positive” are comments I hear often from medical professionals and people who know of my experience with two bouts of cancer and a heart transplant. Sometimes I feel like a broken human being and in those moments I cry, I …

A Little About My Journey: Heart Transplant & Cancers

At 15 years old, I had bone cancer and one of the chemo drugs gave me heart failure. At 39 years old, I had a heart transplant. Four months after my transplant, I discovered I had breast cancer. I had a double mastectomy, then weeks later and just 2 days before my 41st birthday, my Mum died after losing her battle with ovarian cancer. Then at age 44, I was diagnosed with lung cancer.