My Last Blog.

To everyone whose come in and out of my life –

The time has come to say goodbye. I never thought it would be so soon but I guess God had different plans.

There have been so many of you that have affected my life in the most positive way, and I wanted to say THANK YOU. Thank you for bringing me joy till I thought my smile couldn’t get any bigger. Thank you for making me laugh till it hurt. Thank you for showing me what love is. Thank you for being there, for supporting me, for encouraging me, for teaching me, for holding me up, for guiding me, for EVERYTHING. Each of you made me who I was.  Thank you for allowing me in, for letting me be a part of your lives, for giving me the chance to love you. Each and every one of you has affected my life in a positive way. You made me, me. And for the longest time, I was so happy with what my life looked like.

Although this disease has finally “won,” I want you to know I never gave up. I continued to fight until the end.  And I did it for all of you. You have all given me so much; I wanted to show you I could do it, to make you proud to call me a friend.

I want you to know that I lived without regret. I loved strong and loved many. I can say that I’ve seen so many beautiful parts of this world that I will always take with me. I can say that I have SO many memories that have kept me going, kept me smiling and most of all, kept me fighting.  Do I wish I was able to stay longer? Of course. Who doesn’t? But it seems that it just isn’t the way things turned out to be.

I will take a part of each of you with me and I will cherish it for eternity. Life is what you make of it, and I want all of you to make your lives everything you always wanted it to be.

Please don’t pity or feel bad for me. Stepping back, I can see that I had everything I always wanted. And you were all a part of that.

Thank you. I love you.

 

With all my heart and soul,

    Erin

The Time Has Come.

Being on Hospice for 6 days becomes even scarier when you're told you have days to weeks until the time has come.

The last 2 weeks have been such a whirlwind I honestly don't even remember them. Tuesday, May 24th I was home in WV when I woke up feeling like I was super bloated. The next day my stomach was so bloated feeling that I looked preg and felt like it was going to explode. I kept calling my doctor but they said unless I was throwing up there was nothing that could be done. Welp, Friday the 27th I started puking like the chick from The Exorcist. Just tons and tons of green liquid bile.

Dan and I wound up leaving for Jersey that night around 10pm, not knowing what the next day would bring. I think as we pulled down the driveway I just knew that would be the last time I'd ever see my house.

We went to the ER at NYU that Saturday, the 28th where my scans showed my mass had grown again and was pushing on my stomach even more, blocking it. There were so many things being thrown around but they finally came to the conclusion that a tube had to be placed in my stomach, down through my nose, in order to drain the bile and any other fluid. It was horrific. Finally, 2 days later by some Grace of God, a team of other doctors said they would be able to place one directly in my stomach which would be connected to a bag to be drained. Anything would be better than to have some giant tube down the back of my throat into my stomach.

Once that was done and we found out nothing more could be done for me, I was moved to St Peter's University Hospital Hospice Oncology Ward on Saturday, June 4th. Since I was coming to terms with not being able to fulfill a normal Bucket List, riding in an ambulance with the lights on was added. Let me tell you - ambulances SUCK. I had JUST had this tube installed in my stomach and the whole hour ride from NYU to St Peter's was filled with bumps and dips and pain and white-knuckled hands. Let's just say I won't be looking forward to any other rides going forward.

So anyway, here is where I have remained since they brought me. Because of this tube, I've only been allowed to have clear broths, so I haven't been able to eat...ANYTHING. It SUCKS royally. I figured once the end came I'd at least be able to pig out on every and anything I could possibly want since I was so diligent but noooooooooooo. Why give me that??! I can feel myself becoming weaker and more tired. It's scary.

This whole thing is scary. I'm scheduled to move to my mom's house on Monday so hopefully that goes smoothly and I'll at least be able to spend the end at home and not in some hospital room. It's just hard to imagine that this is Life. I try to look back and remember how incredibly AMAZING my life was up until this point and I can at least say that it really was. I travelled, I loved, I sang, I did some life changing things...I had a wonderful childhood with amazing parents and awesome friends. My Life has been incredible - I just wish it was longer.

All I can say for now is, please continue to pray for me - not to be cured because that's obviously not happening, but for peace. Peace of mind while I deal with whatever lies ahead. The unknown is the scariest part of this whole thing and while I'm doing my best to allow God to take the wheel, it's so incredibly terrifying.

Thank you for the unconditional support, messages, love, positive thoughts and prayers now and for the last almost 8 years. I would've never made it this far without all of you.

Yes.

The question was always, "Should I Shave It?" The answer has become "Yes."

Last weekend I took the plunge. It wasn't easy. I was talking one day about how I hadn't started losing my hair yet and legit that SAME night, there it went. It wasn't in clumps like I had heard horror stories about - it was just enough to know that it had begun.

A few days later I was still losing it and losing more of it and my worst nightmare of looking like a "Cancer Patient" was becoming a reality. Was I really going to lose my hair? I couldn't believe it had come to this. The annoying part is that I was actually looking forward to losing it everywhere else. No more shaving? That had to be a dream come true! But guess what?? My head is the only place I was losing it. How unfair is that?

It was Saturday, April 30th and I was having a meltdown - not wanting to look the way I felt. I finally ran downstairs, got a pair of scissors and cut off a huge chunk right in the front of my head. I continued until I looked like a beauty school classmate had gone rogue.

I shaved my husband's head first just to see what number the buzzer should be on...then it was my turn. It took a long time being that we had to buzz through the clumps of existing hair, but it ended up even and when I turned to look at myself, it wasn't all that bad. I thought it would be worse than it was.

Now every day I feel like I have that phantom limb thing where I wake up and try to put my hair in a ponytail, only to remember I don't have hair anymore. I'm still getting "used to it," that's if I'll ever actually get used to looking like GI Jane.

My mom, husband and I tried going to a wig store before I shaved it off and that was just a nightmare. I think it was more traumatizing to go there than to actually shave it off. Having fake hair on a head with no hair just isn't for me. But now I'm worried what I will look like when the rest of it falls out. What I'll look like with a bic'd head. It doesn't seem all that attractive to me - on me. I'm just hoping it goes by quickly.

Tomorrow is my last chemo. Then the following week I'll have scans to know what is going on. I'm so nervous and this is probably the most frightened I've ever been in my little life. I'm not ready for it to be "time" yet. But what other options do I have? So for now, I guess I'll just say, "Fuck Cancer" because really, FUCK CANCER.

I Have To Shave It.

A little different from my actual title - but this time I actually have to.

I haven't written in a long time. A LOT has happened since. I had radiation on my left lung, pancreas and right kidney. I was supposed to have ablations done to my right lung but I wound up with pneumonia as a "fuck you" gift from my lung radiation. All this was done in the last 6 months or so.

On March 17th, I wound up getting really sharp pains in my stomach and was throwing up and couldn't eat anything. This went on for a few days until I went to a local ER in WV on the 20th (since I was home at the time). My Radiologist wanted them to run some scans to make sure I didn't now have Pancreatitis as a "fuck you" gift from my pancreas radiation (something I am now wishing I had) so dry CT's were run and the answer has been a whirlwind since.

To make an incredibly long story short, a few days after the scans were run I went to pick up a reading of said scans - everything had grown and included a new, massive 11.9 x 9.3cm mass in my abdomen which was pushing against my stomach and my lung (causing the nausea, pain, coughing, etc.). I almost fainted in the hallway of the local hospital. How was this possible? I had JUST had scans not even 2 months before. This was all a horrific nightmare and I couldn't believe I was having it.

Both Sloan AND Johns Hopkins wouldn't see me until mid April. I decided to go to the ER at JH on March 22nd to see if they would keep me but that wound up being a wasted trip and nothing was done. I couldn't believe it.

Due to good fortune (for once) I had a contact who made calls for me and I wound up at NYU ER on March 26th. I wound up staying until the 29th after being told I was terminal and would have only a few weeks to a few months to live.

How could this be happening? How could this thing be growing so incredibly fast? How could any of this actually be my life??? I couldn't believe that I had to accept that I was dying.

My fiancé, Dan (we had been planning our wedding for Oct 2017 which was now looking to not be possible) said he wanted to get married, so on March 29th we planned a wedding from my hospital room and wound up getting married on April 2nd, 2016. I was in a ton of pain but hopefully no one could tell and it went off without a hitch. Of course, the wedding was nothing what I had wanted and half the guest list couldn't get invited due to the space we wound up with, but it was ours and it was good and now I am married to the love of my life who wanted to marry me at my worst moment. That really says something about someone's character, don't you think?

There was no room for a honeymoon because on April 4th we met with who would be my new Oncologist at NYU. He said there was a glimmer of hope with a combo of chemo meds. I was now facing my worst nightmare. Do I skip the chemo and possibly die? The mass was growing larger day by day. With gritted teeth I decided on the chemo and started Thursday, April 7th.

I just had my 3rd treatment today. I was told your hair starts to fall out the 2nd week...well, it's the 4th week and yesterday I was talking to a bunch of people about it. Low and behold, last night, "it" started. Now I have no choice but to shave it. I don't want to wait until it gets super thin and globs of it keep coming out in the shower or in bed. I just want to do it and get it over with. So with bated breath, this weekend I'll (along with my husband) be shaving my head.

I keep finding myself asking how this could possibly be my life and how it could've lead to this. Everyone has their own problems and trials and tribulations - Cancer is mine. Now I'm actually fighting for my life. It feels so weird.

My mom had Hospice come in when we thought we had no hope left and I sat there looking at the nurse like she was some extinct species sitting on my living room couch. Why was this person here talking to me about making me comfortable? It is all so surreal.

So, I wound up dying my hair purple, donating 9 inches of it to a children's charity, telling Hospice to take a hike, went on a minimoon to Newport, RI, and have just been dealing with the everyday hell of chemo. The nausea hasn't been super bad, but the HORRIBLE anxiety has been kicking my ass every day. I can never seem to get comfortable, I've started getting mouth sores (joy.), I can't eat very much (I've lost 15lbs so far since this whole thing started in March), pain, annoying, dreadful chemo.

Hopefully I'll be singing it's praises once my scans come back showing that everything has shrunk but I won't know for another 2 weeks at least. Here's me with my short, purple hair a week ago...

If you can, say an extra prayer for me. We're in the big leagues now...