My return to the blogging world

I attended the LUNGevity Hope Summit this past weekend and all of the HOPE and Survivorship opened my eyes to how wonderful this community of Lung Cancer Survivors, Caregivers, Doctor's and Advocates really is.  Thus, I decided to bring back my blog! I had stopped it last summer as it was just too early for me personally. I was still adjusting to my targeted therapy pill, emotionally I still was all over the place so whenever I would write, it would just make me cry and stir up so many emotions that I was no ready for.  So here is Round 2

I am now 14 months in on my targeted therapy called Tarceva! I still despise some of the side effects, but in the end, it's a love/hate relationship that I have no problem dealing with for years and years to come as that is my goal! The median age of this drug working before resistance begins is about 12 months, well I have past that median age, however I have my scans on Tuesday May 9th! So the scanxiety is beginning to settle in but much later then all of my other scans. If you ask my husband or daughter how I have been the entire month prior to scans, they both will say um, well, a little witchy....yeah, witchy with a "B"! So if everyone can say a little prayer the night before or the morning of, my family and I would really appreciate it! Scans are the worst, the scanxiety is even worse, but thankfully, I get my results 2 hours after the scans and don' have to wait days for the results.

This blog could turn into a book if I tried to catch up on all that has gone on since last August, so the short version is, kicking cancer's ass, while having fun in LA, NYC, Myrtle Beach, birthday celebrations, holidays,  dealing with side effects, and enjoying time with each other. Living Life Now instead of later! That has really become my mantra lately, LIVE LIFE NOW. So many people put their jobs in front of their marriages, their kids, everything else in their life. What happens when you simply run out of time for no planned reason? Then you never got to enjoy what life is really about, to me, MOMENTS. Moments with my family, my loved ones, my dearest friends....that is what life is about.  

The LUNGevity Hope Summit was an amazing place for all of us Survivors to get together to bond and get information about our disease.  It felt like a huge reunion! I talk to so many Survivors online through Facebook groups that I didn't realize how many it actually was until I saw all of them this past weekend.  For a first timer, I was mentally and physically exhausted at the end.  I appreciated everything that was planned and how it was executed, but talking cancer for 3 days straight definitely took a toll on me mentally.  Of course the thought of scans coming up didn't exactly help it either.  

I think what became more apparent to me during this weekend is that I must be missing something when it comes to how and why we have all of these different Lung Cancer Organizations basically spending their own separate money on their own versions of the same things.  We know that Lung Cancer is incredibly underfunded, so why do we have many of the same things such as a New Patient Guide or an online database to collect data from patience.  Obviously I am still new to this advocacy part but wouldn't it make sense to pool all of the money together and fund one single Guide or one single online data collection point? We all have this horrible disease, all we as Survivors want, is for the research to keep going, hopefully faster then ever and that the world is educated about our disease properly.  I fail to understand why there is this great divide between most of the Lung Cancer foundations.  Why can't we all just get along and do it together so that we can speed up the process as a whole? Every organization is working hard for our cause, imagine how much we could get done together?

Thanks for reading...this was a lot easier then last year, and I hope to touch on many different issues in the future, I refuse for this just to be based on my health and what goes on in my life! 

LIVE LIFE NOW!
xoxo
Nicole