#cancersucks

Today’s adventure entailed an echocardiogram and a class on what to expect during my first round of chemo.

My jest of the echocardiogram is that I apparently have a heart of gold that shoots fireworks with every beat. Red and blue ones, too! There is, of course, some fancy medical terminology for that, but I have no idea what it is. I just know it sounds pretty damn impressive.

As for the chemo class, my jest of things is this: if I don’t die during the first 3.5 hours from some horrible side effect, I’ll probably be on my way home asleep on an overdose of Benadryl.

"I'm sorry for not being a good mom.."

You died and cancer took everything you had every given me with you. Except your scent in this nail polish box.. you had it for years. You can see the damage from the wear and tear. I stick my head in it just to smell you're cigarette smoke and your walmart perfume. I miss you. It may not seem or sound like much too most people but too me. It's everything now..

Fuck leukemia.

What is one in a million? Well, mathematically, it's 0.0001%. As a figure of speech, we use it to signify something extremely rare, highly unlikely, or truly exceptional. But what does it really mean?

One in a million is like taking one single step in a journey of 568 miles. It's sixty seconds out of two years. It's flipping a coin twenty times in a row and only coming up heads. One in a million is roughly 8000 people out of the entire world's population, or roughly 330 in the United States.

On October 21st, 2025, we found out my mom is one in a million. Most people think that of their parents anyway, but staring at a pathology report that reads "chordoma" takes that from idiom to stark reality, and all the breath in your lungs with it. Chordoma means cancer and cancer means death. That might be a little melodramatic. At the very least, it means more doctors than you've ever seen in your life, being scanned to have pictures taken of your insides like you're an exhibit at the state fair, and questions that far outnumber the amount of times you asked your parents "why?" as a kid. It means fear and grief and worry and tears. It means pain and complicated treatments that weaken your body and maybe even surgeries that impact the rest of your life. It means discovering a strength within yourself you never knew you had. And if your cancer is chordoma, it means you're one in a million like my mom.

I gotta be honest with you. I wish she wasn't. I wish she was one in ten. One in three. Dime a dozen, six for a nickel. Not extremely rare, highly unlikely, or truly exceptional. Just Mom.