Winter Blues - January 26, 2026

Hello 2026 and happy belated new year! I hope you and yours are safe and warm wherever you are braving out this ridiculous snow and ICE. 

We are still barreling straight through the Great Boob Coup of 2025. I finished the first part of chemo, the AC (four infusions, every two weeks) on January 5, and recently met with my absolutely badass oncologist (who somehow also happens to be a human sugar cube). Long story short: I am responding insanely well to treatment. No one can feel any of the tumors anymore. If there was ever any doubt about whether this was working, there isn’t now. We are burning right through it. Next up is Taxol, starting tomorrow, which is once a week for 12 weeks. I hear it’s generally easier to manage than the previous four big bad ones, and I am 100% choosing to believe that wholeheartedly and blindly, lol! If only Cape Cod Hospital had a frequent flier program. 

The mental side has become the hardest part by a long shot in recent weeks. I spent 5 days in the hospital last week (I’m okay!), which resulted in a week-long delay to start Taxol. 12 more weeks of my life are about to get consumed by hospital visits and feeling like absolute sh*t. Between the steroids and menopause, I’ve gained nearly 20 pounds after losing almost 100 over the past few years. I finally stopped my lifelong nervous habit of picking my fingernails--a 2025 resolution that stuck--only to have chemo make them hurt horribly and flake off anyway. Most of my friends and family are several states away. And I’m still about eight months out from returning to anything resembling a sort-of-normal-sometimes life. When you’ve been sick, in pain, and run down for as long as I have, even before the cancer, your brain starts to whisper that maybe this is just how it is now. That maybe it won’t get better, no matter how much you try. That maybe it’s not even worth trying. Between my heart, my brain and my boobs (and my categorically AWFUL taste in men) I do sometimes wonder what fun, creative way my body or circumstances might whip up to try to kill me next. I had roughly 30 seconds this past summer where I felt good about myself before the universe said, “Yeah, f*ck you. Again.” I feel so stupid for thinking my biggest challenges were behind me. 

This is my reality. Yes, I am beating this and it truly does seem like everything will work out medically. But I am so, so utterly disheartened by the wider picture this paints sometimes that it's hard to not get swallowed up by it. Figuring out how to navigate the wasteland this is leaving behind in my body (which was already wrecked!), my identity, my physical sense of self, and how I feel about life in general is going to be a very real and very daunting challenge for the rest of my days. I don’t even know where I’d start...but I suppose that’s a bridge I’ll have to cross when I get there. 

Here’s to easier times ahead for us all. Look at the world…good God. We could all use a hug these days. Sending you and yours just that, and then another one, just to be sure ;)

All my love,

Caroline