Blood Cancer Awareness Month (a tad late)

#FightBloodCancer

For those new to this story, it’s mid-October 2021 and I’m recently in remission from a blood cancer (AML leukemia) that was diagnosed in mid-January (woo-hoo!). Blood Cancer Awareness month was in September and I missed my own deadline to launch this series because I was in the hospital Labor Day week being treated for rapidly-moving skin and gut graft versus host disease. 

One thing I’ve grown a deeper awareness / learned new facets of is time; time doesn’t work the same in all situations. Cancer is one of those situations, and it’s hard to describe how it’s different than the general stream of time that feels… well, invisible.   

To make my experience visible, I’ve decided to develop a multimedia memoir and share it and my new company, Chill Creative – but that’s a story for an early 2022 installment. 

Today I’m celebrating my 100-day mark since receiving my bone marrow transplant. This is a huge milestone because it means that – aside from my gut and skin issues – my days of early graft versus host risks are over. Although we’re moving into a new time frame (when anything can pop up at anytime for the remainder of my life – think of it as a systemic autoimmune disease that comes and goes), I’m walking more every day and gaining strength. I feel better than I have in over a year. And I want to share a few intentions that will shape this space:

• Give up control, Gonzo style. This will be a memoir, and ya, it’ll be reflective. Yet I’m still really early in my cancer recovery; I might relapse or have additional complications from the transplant and all the chemo. So I’m giving up efforts to control where and when this goes. Don’t be scared – I have ideas and an outline, but cancer has taught me that I’m rarely in charge.

• We aren’t alone. No, this isn’t an Area 51 update. It’s just a friendly reminder that no matter how low we feel, we aren’t alone.
  
• The human experience: I’m going to share perspectives, photos (like the one below), and thoughts that haven’t been shared through the Camp Kickass blog – kind of like a “behind the scenes” of the last 9 months. I apologize in advance if some of the posts are darker than you’d expect, either visually or text-based. It was all part of the journey and I found it fascinating, even during the hardest days.    

So that’s the plan, and a new segment will be released every few weeks. Thanks for joining the ride! 

Sooner! – Julie