Chronic pain changes you. I know that as a doctor who has treated it, and as a patient who lives with it. Chronic pain isn’t only a feeling in the body or an issue of physical health. It shifts your thoughts, your mood, and how you move through the day. It also pushes on your…
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What Cancer Has Taught Me About Myself
I didn’t expect to become a student again at this stage of my life. But cancer doesn’t ask permission before it starts teaching. Six years into this journey, I’m still discovering things about myself I never knew. Some of them surprise me. Some of them I wish I didn’t have to learn. All of them…
Read more“Living With Guilt During Cancer: A Doctor’s Story of Illness, Family, and Healing,”
Key Takeaways• Guilt often becomes a constant companion in cancer, touching caregiving, survival, emotions, genetics, lifestyle choices, and even relief.• Most cancer-related guilt punishes rather than protects; it drains energy from healing, relationships, and daily life.• Survivor guilt and “relief guilt” come from the search for fairness and control in an unfair universe, not from…
Read moreWhat I’ve Learned: The Forever Part Nobody Warns You About
When someone asks you “How are you?” I’ve discovered you can tell whether they’re simply looking for you to reply “okay” and move on, or if they’re looking for you to be honest, and to be able to listen to whatever your response may be.,Six years of radiation, surgery, Stem Cell Transplantation, CAR T cell…
Read moreWas It Worth It?
A few weeks ago, my palliative care physician asked me a simple question that nobody had ever asked me before – “Was all that worth it?” She knew I had been receiving treatment for my cancers for 6 years now – 6 years of chemotherapy; a stem-cell transplant that provided me with 6 months of…
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