Blog
Short, honest writing from a stage 4 colorectal cancer survivor — what helped, what hurt, and what I wish someone had handed me on day one.
Posts are grouped below by where you might be right now. Jump to whichever fits: My Story · Treatment · Survivorship · Caregivers.
My Story
How I got here — diagnosis, the search for a trial, and the treatment that hadn’t been tried on a human before me.
- You Are Not a Statistic
- Just Diagnosed With Colorectal Cancer: Your First 30 Days
- How to Find a Clinical Trial for Colorectal Cancer (When No One Finds It for You)
- 4 Doses of IL-2: What High-Dose Interleukin Therapy Actually Feels Like
- I Ran My Entire Medical Profile Through an AI Research System
Treatment
What the side effects actually feel like — chemo, immunotherapy, surgery — not what the pamphlet says.
- TCR-T Immunotherapy for Colorectal Cancer: What It’s Like to Be the First Patient
- FOLFOX Chemotherapy: What It Actually Feels Like
- Chemo Neuropathy: What It Actually Feels Like and What Might Help
- Chemo Brain Is Real: What It Feels Like and What Helps
- Living With an Ileostomy Bag: The Unfiltered Truth
- What I Actually Ate During Chemo (and Why)
- Off-Label Medications for Cancer: What I Took and Why
Survivorship
Life after and during treatment — the symptoms, the labs, the mental toll, and the parts nobody schedules a follow-up appointment for.
- Colorectal Cancer Symptoms Nobody Talks About (Until It’s Too Late)
- Insurance and Financial Navigation: What I Wish I’d Known
- Post-Surgery Depression Isn’t a Few Bad Days
- What Your Oncologist Doesn’t Have Time to Tell You
- How to Read Your Own Pathology Report: A Cancer Patient’s Guide
- Cancer and Mental Health: The Emotional War Nobody Prepares You For
- Treatment Ended. Now What? The Weird Limbo Nobody Prepares You For
- Scanxiety: How to Survive the Wait for Scan Results
- CEA Levels and Colorectal Cancer: What Your Number Actually Means
- What Is LARS? After Colorectal Surgery
Caregivers
For the people doing the driving, the waiting, and the holding-it-together.
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