This interior glimpse will yield two words that I wish were different: progression and swelling. My tumors are squatters, sprawled out, feet up on the table, defiant, undaunted by previous attempts to evict them.

“She died,” I heard three different times this month. Now, I know I will die from my disease. What I did not realize was the number of friends I would lose along the way to Stage IV metastatic breast cancer, including most recently Charlotte, Maureen and Brooke.

I see parallels between this Slacker Pie Crust recipe and my odyssey with cancer.

People say that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. In my cancer world, these MRIs are one way doctors actually “count” my insides.

I hate clock-time. I love life-time. 

Welcome to my sacred salon, demise den, parting parlor… basically my room to die in at home

“Dear Erica,” you write. “You seem to be doing so much, and really really really living life to the fullest. How do you feel most of the time? What is the sick/okay/good ratio? How much of your time is spent tending to the cancer versus being able to carry on with life?”

“You could increase your weights, you know,” Gayle the trainer points out. I flash back to six months ago, when I returned to the gym, suitably recovered from radiation and steroids. I felt fine, but I was shocked that I couldn’t budge the leg-lift machine.

Inspiration by mastication

Waking up after surgery.