adventure daily.
It was a little over a year ago that I discovered a lump in my armpit. They'd been really itchy -- my armpits, that is. I wasn't itchy anywhere else, so I thought I had developed a sensitivity to my deodorant. I switched brands, then quit wearing deodorant altogether for a while, but the itching …
October is one of my favorite months, and one in particular was extra special. We've had the most amazing weather the past couple of weeks, with plenty of 60-70 degree days and abundant sunshine. The leaves have been especially colorful and it's seemed like the foliage has lingered for a while. And I've continued on …
It's been almost two months since my last chemo treatment. The time has flown, and it's been an incredibly busy couple months -- selling two houses, buying a new house, moving, running an event, hiring and onboarding someone new at work and becoming a supervisor for the first time, and trying to soak in as …
I've fallen way behind on my original goal of writing a blog post for every round of chemo, but it's been a pretty busy past month and a half. Some of it has been an exhausted busy -- the 5th and 6th rounds of chemo were tougher than the rest both mentally and physically. But …
My fourth treatment has been the roughest yet, by a significant margin. The nausea came early and with a vengeance. By Friday evening, a few hours after treatment ended, I was horribly queasy, and nothing helped. I still refuse to take more meds than I have to, so the two bottles of anti-nausea pills remain …
I'm beginning to get used to my life being dictated by the chemo cycle. There are always unknowns, and each two week period between treatments has been a little different, but there has also been a level of consistency to hold on to. The first 4-5 days after each treatment are still a bit of …
Four days out from my second treatment, I couldn't imagine doing another three or more months of this. The side effects seemed a little more heightened than after the first time around. I'm not sure if they really were or if my expectations were different. I expected to feel bad the first time, and when …
My first chemo session (which, for lack of a better word, is what I’ll call the 2 weeks following each treatment) has been a breeze physically compared to what I expected. The day of treatment I started to feel a little weird a couple hours after my infusion ended. My stomach started to hurt and …
Mammoth Endurance Gravel had been on my radar all winter, so when Evan mentioned that he'd volunteered to sweep part of the course, I decided that would be my big spring ride. 140 miles and almost 15,000 feet of climbing -- not the longest ride I've ever done, but the most elevation gain in a …
You don’t think it’s cancer, do you? I asked my brand new primary care doctor after she’d examined the swollen lymph node I'd come in about. No, she answered, but we need to do all the tests just to make sure. I felt a little silly calling a doctor about the small lump that had …
helena kotala 