As of writing this, I’m officially done with Round 4 🎉 I have 2 rounds left, or 4 treatments.

At the start of this journey, looking ahead at 6 rounds (12 treatments) was daunting and I now have so few left to go. When I first went to the hospital and was struggling with being away from home and feeling so sick, I had to hold things in my mind for the mental strength. One of the things that got me through started out as a bit of a joke that I took from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She had mentioned that she could get through anything 10 seconds at a time (while she spun a massive wheel that was actually for nothing). In the worse moments like nausea hitting hard or dealing with loud and crazy roommates, I would breath deeply and count to 10 and then start over. Truly, it worked. It helped keep me focused on something that wasn’t terrible and got me over some big humps.

One other thing that helped was thinking about pictures of squirrels. Let me explain: a few days before I went to the hospital, I saw a post about how when squirrels fall, they spread their limbs and tails to increase air resistance, which helps them land safely. The outcome is a very cute landing pose, which makes them look like superheroes.

When I sent it to my friends, I mentioned I’d keep these images in my mind to help me through tough times. At the time, I didn’t know I’d actually be needing to practice that in the coming days. But as waves of nausea crept up, or the sadness of not being home built up, I pictured these cute squirrels and it was enough of a distraction to get me through some of the more difficult times.

When I was first diagnosed, my bffs (who brought me Bilu, my little alien chemo buddy) suggested we plan something fun for when I finish chemo. They wanted me to have something to look forward to and an extra fun thing to keep fighting towards.

We tossed around a few different ideas and landed on a pretty massive one: girls trip to Paris. It’s been in my mind as I go through treatment. It’s been one of the things that has kept me going, for sure. But it still felt like a faraway maybe sort of thing. Now that I’ve gotten such positive results from my PET scan, and I know the treatment is working, our girls trip feels a lot more feasible.

So, we’re officially starting to plan and will be booking stuff soon 🙌

When I was in high school, I took 3 years of French. I intended to take AP French in senior year, but unfortunately not enough people signed up so the class was cancelled, and instead I was a TA for my French teacher. A trip to France was a dream then that ended up on the back burner as the years went on.

Now that it’s within view, I’ve started to learn and practice my French again - if you’re on Duolingo and want to help keep me accountable, add me as a friend! It’s been so fun to learn French again and makes me even more excited for this trip.

In practice of gratitude and positivity, here are a few things that made me happy this past week: