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.

Weekly Round-Up

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

Triggers

I've begun to understand better how often I am "triggered" by a variety of things and how that relates back to traumas I've undergone in my life, especially living with Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) since my de novo diagnosis in 2017. Identifying and defining a trigger is often helpful for me to understand … Continue reading Triggers →

Shared Decision Making

This concept of Shared Decision Making is a relatively new one for me and so, as usual, I want to start with a definition. This one is a good general definition from a handout from http://www.healthit.gov: Shared decision making is a key component of patient- centered health care. It is a process in which clinicians … Continue reading Shared Decision Making →

Weekly Round-Up

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

The Pressure to “Make Every Day Count”

One of the main suggestions I've received (and mainly followed) for dealing with a terminal illness is to be more mindful, to live in the moment, to focus on what can be done NOW rather than looking back or looking ahead too much. For those of us who are usually the planners in the family, … Continue reading The Pressure to “Make Every Day Count” →

Betrayal Trauma

I recently stumbled upon this term, betrayal trauma, in an article linked to another article I was reading and I started to consider how this is something that I've struggled with. As usual, I feel something, react to it, and then am left to puzzle through what happened and why. So, let's start with the … Continue reading Betrayal Trauma →

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

BIONJ, Part II

I've written before about Bisphosphonate Induced Osteonecrosis of the Jaw (BIONJ), which I was diagnosed with back in June of 2020, and you can read about that here. From what I am hearing from a variety of doctors, there are more cases of BIONJ since those of us with MBC and other metastatic cancers are … Continue reading BIONJ, Part II →

Medical Update, 4th of 2021

Those of us who are forever patients are scanned all the time. We lovingly/sarcastically/mournfully call this process "scan, treat, repeat." Because of these regular scans, things that would never have been known about the interior workings of our bodies are known and become a potential issue, at least inside my head. I can't say that … Continue reading Medical Update, 4th of 2021 →