Author: Abigail Johnston

I'm a daughter, a wife, a mother, and I've been living with Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer since March, 2017. All of the words I publish are my own.

BCAM 2021: Day #4

This is one of the facts that surprised me the most when I started getting into the nitty-gritty details of breast cancer after my own diagnosis. Understanding that there are so many different variables that make up the umbrella of the term "breast cancer," has helped me understand better why a cure hasn't been found … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #4 →

BCAM 2021: Day #3 & a LIVE roundtable webinar

We have some data points, some pieces of information that help us understand the whole picture of who is diagnosed with breast cancer and when. When a biopsy comes back positive for malignant breast cancer, that information is reported to various databases, depending on your location in the world. The next data point is typically … Continue reading BCAM 2021: Day #3 & a LIVE roundtable webinar →

BCAM 2021; Day #2

When I was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer in early 2017, I was already limping. At the time, I didn't think there was any connection between the lump I'd felt in my left breast and the limp I'd had for a few months and the pain I was having in my leg. Now I … Continue reading BCAM 2021; Day #2 →

BCAM 2021; Day #1

These numbers are scarier every time I read them and they are incomplete. We know a lot about the incidents of diagnosed breast cancer, but not so much about how many have an early stage diagnosis and then progress to Stage IV. We can extrapolate knowing how many are diagnosed and how many die since … Continue reading BCAM 2021; Day #1 →

Speaking our Truth

Truth is a big deal to me. From a personality and training perspective, I’m wired to look for and speak the truth. What I often forget to do is package the truth. But what other people don’t often understand is that I really do appreciate when others speak their truth, give their perspective, even if … Continue reading Speaking our Truth →

Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) 2021

October of 2021 is the fifth (5th) Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) since my Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) diagnosis in 2017 and that brings me ever closer to the milestone of living five (5) years with MBC. And yet, sometimes I think that looking for the milestones or putting any stock in reaching/achieving … Continue reading Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) 2021 →

When pain becomes chronic …

Pain. It's such a short word that encompasses so many things. Before Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC), I'd experienced some amount of pain. I got into a few car accidents. Dislocated a wrist. I'd had braces, twice, along with some dental surgery. When no longer very young, I had two c-sections and a 26 … Continue reading When pain becomes chronic … →

To Pink or Not to Pink, that is the question

Recently, in a metastatic breast cancer support group, a member asked that we discuss how each of us were reacting to the annual pink saturation that is coming up in October. The member who brought up the issue expressed some struggles with the fact that so many of the fundraisers involve bras or other sexualized … Continue reading To Pink or Not to Pink, that is the question →

To Boost or Not To Boost, that is the question …

There is so much information in the news, in print, discussed online and seemingly everywhere else about the COVID vaccines, how many doses and when and now the possibility of a booster. The needle seems to move daily on what we know and what we don't know since much of the monitoring of the efficacy … Continue reading To Boost or Not To Boost, that is the question … →

ReBlog: Weekly Round-Up from Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer

T for this week’s round-up of the best of the blog posts which I’ve read over the past week. These are the posts that have moved me, taught me …Weekly Round-Up