This month marks six months on the oral chemo drug Xeloda.
Six months feels significant.
There have been side effects — the fatigue, the tender hands and feet, the quiet daily reminders that this is chemotherapy, even when it comes in pill form. But despite all of that, I am deeply grateful. Grateful that my body is tolerating it. Grateful that, so far, it’s doing its job. Grateful that I’m still able to live my life in the ways that matter most to me.
‘Tolerating’ may sound like a small word. In the metastatic world, it is everything. Tolerating treatment means time. It means stability. It means the ability to plan, something that once felt impossibly fragile.
And because I’m tolerating it, we are planning.
This coming week, I’ll be heading to the LBCA Conference in Philadelphia. I’ll be speaking on a panel, and Jim will be attending the caregiver sessions.
The LBCA conference is special in a way that’s nearly impossible to describe unless you’ve been there. It isn’t just a medical meeting. It’s a gathering of people who truly understand metastatic breast cancer. Patients, researchers, clinicians, advocates, caregivers are all in one room. It’s where science meets lived experience. Where research presentations are followed by hallway hugs. Where we talk about biomarkers and clinical trials and then sit down and talk about fear, resilience, and hope.
It’s also where I get to see people I deeply love and respect. Women and men in this community who are doing the hard, relentless work of pushing research forward. Advocating for better trials, better funding, better recognition of this disease, and better support for all of us living with metastatic cancer. Over the past four years, these people have become friends, mentors, and fellow travelers. Being in the same room with them reminds me that I am not walking this road alone. None of us are. We are not just surviving. We are thriving.
Then in September, Jim and I will head back to Mystic to volunteer with Little Pink Houses of Hope. We’ll reunite with old friends and meet new families attending the weeklong retreat. Families who, like us, know what it means to have cancer reshape everything. We are there to serve, to listen, and to offer something that medical appointments often can’t…unhurried, wholehearted, weeklong presence.
As someone living with this disease myself, I hope that matters. I hope it helps, even a little.
Volunteering has been part of our lives since my diagnosis. In many ways, it has been a lifeline — perhaps as much for me as for anyone we’ve served.
When I volunteer, something shifts. The focus moves outward. I step away, even briefly, from my own scans, my own labs, my own side effects. I get to sit with another cancer patient and simply listen. To be an ear. A steady presence. A quiet reassurance that they are seen.
Sometimes what people need most is not advice but understanding. A nod that says, ‘yes, I know that fear’. Or, ‘yes, I’ve walked through that too’.
Volunteering reminds me that even in the middle of uncertainty, we still have something to give. Compassion. Experience. Time. Love.
I’m here. I’m tolerating. I’m working. I’m volunteering. I’m living.
And for today, that is enough. 💛