Trying to Understand
Exploring and learning about life

Please join us to celebrate the life of Paige Dersham Wednesday June 12 11am-1pm Being a teacher was her heart and soul, and Steck was...

Paige had written a few words to finish this blog. "I was so naive when I started this blog about my cancer journey. In my heart I...

July 25, 2023 I have never been a goal setter. I mean I have not been aimlessly going through life but I don’t sit down and think about goals and how to break them down to meet them. My goals are more spur of the moment ideas and then I just do it, not a lot of planning. An example would be I read a flier about National Board Certification forever ago, and pretty much decided on the spot to do it. I had no real idea just what I had signed up for, but it worked out. I have ha

June 3 2023 I would like to wake up for just one day and have a normal day with no reminders of my cancer. Just one day. I am not asking to be rid of the cancer, I know that is an impossibility, I just want a day where I forget all day that I have cancer and the day is just an old normal day. I wake up every morning and I am immediately reminded of my cancer as I untangle my oxygen tube and my TPN tube from each other so I can get up, which I have to do very carefully so I do

April 19 2023 I am mid way through my second treatment cycle of a phase 1 study drug, living the lab rat life. This new treatment drug is called SGN-B7H4V, yeah so new it doesn’t have a name yet. It has been tested on animals and a few humans, mostly to determine side effects and efficacy. I am in the study that is looking at the best dosage. So I know I am getting the real thing, there are no placebos in this study, which is good. They are also continuing to study side effec

March 6 2023 Here is another of the things we don’t think about when we do not have cancer or some other serious medical issue - what it does to a person's body image. I am going to talk about it from a cancer point of view as that is my lens but I am sure this is true of any disease or its treatment that changes a person’s body. I went into this cancer healthy and happy with my body. Yeah I had gained a couple extra pounds after menopause but nothing I was unhappy with. I l

February 18 2023 Thinking about life with cancer falls on a continuum. On one side you have hope and optimism (Pinkie Pie) and on the other side despair and pessimism (Eeyore). On any given day I can be found all over this continuum, although I find myself less and less on the Pinkie Pie end as each new treatment, surgery, side effect, pain, and emotion take their toll. I would love to live in the middle. My science logic brain does, I am not so naive as to think everything w

January 25 2023 I don't feel like I have any words with writing right now. Feeling to glooming and wore out I guess. It is out there looming The blackhole of why I aim my ship toward it Knowing I should not It is dangerous It will be spaghettification of infinite whys All lies and truths No answers Veer off Don’t get trapped in the blackhole of why The number tell the story 652 406 234 139 119 103 83 60 117 128 413 840

January 11 2023 I think we have established how much cancer sucks, it most definitely does. I feel like it just sucks more everyday. It is not just stealing the length of my life, it is stealing the time I have left. Because everyday I spend time doing something related in some way to cancer, is time I am not living my life. It may seem like small things but they add up to a lot of time. Various appointments - with drive time, and depending on the appointment this can eat up

December 28 2022 You hear about people who have terminal cancer and all the things they accomplish before they die. They travel to all the places they have never been, they become fluent in some language, they run 8 marathons to raise money for cancer. I don’t know how they do it. They make me feel like I am wasting my precious time by napping all day. I know those people are the exception and that most cancer patients are just trying to survive each day but since the overach