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 …

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.

Breast Cancer: So Many Decisions, What Should I Do?

Dear Breast Cancer Patient, Are you trying to decide between lumpectomy vs mastectomy? Unilateral vs bilateral? To have reconstruction or be flat chested? It's fucking overwhelming. I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you what I did. I was diagnosed with DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) only three months after my …

Getting the Call: Heart Transplant & Uber

I am often asked, “where we’re you when you got the call for transplant?” For months I was vigilant, perhaps hyper-vigilant with answering my phone. Nothing would prevent me from picking up an “unknown” call, not even the sacred space of the movie theater was going to cause me to miss the call for a …

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 …

F*ck was my favorite word as a 15 yr Cancer Patient

During my first bout of cancer, I was a horrible, rotten no good teenager. This is one tale of my defiance during a Chemo treatment. Now at 42 years old, I reflect on this time with raucous laughter and embarrassment.