The sky's the limit.
The Cielem’el Survival and Growth Journal evolved out of two web logs I have maintained over time.
Begun in 2009 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 32, The Cielem’el Cancer Journal documented my trials, tribulations, and spiritual growth during breast cancer treatment, with information on the diagnoses, surgeries, chemotherapy treatments, radiation, and hormone therapy treatments, as well as all the personal and professional life stuff that still goes on throughout living a life with cancer. As a breast cancer survivor, I endeavor to inspire other young women like myself to fully engage and manage their cancer and treatments, and know that there are many women out there who are experiencing a similarly challenging emotional journey. Life doesn’t stop because you have cancer, it just gets more challenging.
About a year after finishing radiation, while still posting to The Cielem’el Cancer Journal, I started posting The Cielem’el Personal & Spiritual Growth Blog, which focused more clearly on areas of personal growth, self-development, and spiritual growth. My life journey and growth as a person neither began nor ended with cancer, and the Personal Growth blog was more of a continual journal of life experiences and learnings along my ongoing life journey beyond cancer. The journey honestly began when I was a newborn, shuffled and abused in multiple foster homes before being adopted by absolutely wonderful parents, and my life journey, consciously and continuously seeking personal growth, self development, and spiritual growth continues to evolve.
Over time it became clear that these two subjects cannot be divorced and maintained separately, because it is everything together that makes my web log what it is, meaning, an online journal of life experiences, survival, and growth from the perspective of someone who has survived multiple severe life trials and nurtured a conscious approach to personal and spiritual growth and self development. Hence, The Cielem’el Survival & Growth Journal. :)
I can’t concentrate. I start to type and it aggravates my fingers. I put my feet up under my desk and if my feet reach the wall the pressure of the wall on the ball of my foot distracts me and I forget what I was doing. Same thing when I walk to a different part of the house. Everything […]
Continue reading »Well here’s a neat little story. My mom wore her pink Chainalytics breast cancer walk Team Cynthia t-shirt to her exercise class on Monday morning. And it seems everyone in the entire town of Yankton, South Dakota knows and loves my parents, and so everybody is always asking Mom about me and how I’m doing. So today when her exercise […]
Continue reading »I’ve been pondering it for a week . . . I was supposed to teach a grad class in San Francisco starting the first week in January (that’s something over an hour east of Sacramento without traffic, which is about two hours east of my place in the national forest, so, even if I’m staying in Sacramento, we’re talking about […]
Continue reading »There is a woman who is often coming out of the radiation center when I am going in. My first time there she was coming out and her face was a little spotty and she had a scarf on her head like a chemo patient, and I wondered if she was getting radiation on her face. I’ve seen her a […]
Continue reading »Uff da, this stuff can really wear you down. Hurting a lot just wears you out, I can’t explain it. And like they said, it’s cumulative, it seems like there’s never a break. If it’s not my hands it’s my feet. If it not my feet it’s the shakes. Last night we went to a cross-dressing Halloween party and then […]
Continue reading »My dad sent me a pps file yesterday that was these photos of beautiful sceneries with a story about a man who had four sons each of whom he sent on a quest to see a pear tree, each in a different season of the year. The first son went in winter and thought the tree was withered and ugly, […]
Continue reading »I wore my neon pink wig today, and it was a happy thing because so many people got a smile on their face when they saw my super-bright wig on Halloween. Not many adults really do much for Halloween, you know? It’s not like I was in costume, but it was neat because it made me smile to make them […]
Continue reading »Wow, I lost a week or more somewhere, it’s the end of October already? Neuropathy is really bad today, it apparently has better days and worse days, today being one of those days I just can’t seem to handle the burning and it puts me to tears. Sorry to everyone for not writing much.
Continue reading »Twenty minute tandem ride at lunch and I’m bushed. Have to nap now. But hey, at least I’m trying.
Continue reading »Chain’s cancer walk was a huge success. Team Cynthia apparently even included seven kids in strollers! Over all the walk had more than 12,000 participants and my mom said it was just awesome. Chain had more than 40 participants all in matching t-shirts, and had a wonderful presence in the walk. I was completely bummed not to be able to […]
Continue reading »This was a really tough day. I tried to do wwaaaayyyyyy too much this weekend, and my body basically shut down yesterday and I slept a ton. But today I’m still paying for it . . . my hands and feet are terrible with neuropathy, my hands won’t stop trembling, and my eyesight is so bad I can’t see my […]
Continue reading »Oy vey, what a busy weekend. Friday night we had a birthday party to go to, Saturday night a Halloween costume party that we got costumes for on Saturday (Mark was a brain surgeon in surgery scrubs we got at the costume store and I was his patient wearing a hospital gown I “borrowed” from the radiation center, and we […]
Continue reading »I’m starting to be burned from the radiation already, the whole big rectangle of skin that’s getting radiated is feeling itchy or stings. My, aren’t the next seven weeks going to be fun. 🙂 I don’t know if I explained before why my radiation is over an 8-week period . . . I actually have 38 radiation sessions. I started […]
Continue reading »Uff da, so many reminders all the time that I’m in cancer treatment, who could forget and effectively be normal? Anything normal I do gets tainted as well, with neuropathy or fatigue. I tried to go to a tango workshop Wednesday night (I mean, I went to a tango workshop Wednesday night), and I was going crazy from little “chemo […]
Continue reading »I saw the radiation oncologist, Dr. Ryu, after my radiation session today. She’s doing weekly breast exams, and then that changes to monthly (I think?) after radiation, for the first year or something like that. The other thing during radiation is having blood draws every three weeks, and then I’ll probably have my port taken out right after radiation. I […]
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