Posted on October 23, 2017
by Valerie Powell
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I’ve somewhat avoided this post for a few days, mostly because I was too tired to think and also because I didn’t know if I could do the specialness of this day justice. October 20th was a day I had been anticipating for every… Continue Reading “The Finish Line”
Category: Treatment UpdatesTags: birmingham, cancer, cancer blog, family, fatigue, fear, fraction, Healing, last day, last treatment, radiation oncology, radiation therapy, radiation treatment, reflection, sharon spencer, side effects, skin toxicity, tongue ulcers, uab, week 6
Posted on October 13, 2017
by Valerie Powell
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How is it already the end of week 5? How is there only 1 week to go? And why didn’t the first 3 weeks go by this quickly? Actually I’m not sure these weeks have gone by all that fast after all. I think… Continue Reading “Week Five”
Category: By the Week, Treatment UpdatesTags: cancer, cancer blog, clinical research, fear, Healing, pathology, radiation oncology, radiation therapy, radiation treatment, sharon spencer, side effects, uab, week 5
Posted on October 6, 2017
by Valerie Powell
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I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I stayed in bed for nearly the entire day on Saturday, that this week the number of treatments left started getting smaller than the number of treatments behind me, or that my cold and allergies finally… Continue Reading “Week Four”
Category: By the Week, Treatment UpdatesTags: birmingham, cancer, cancer blog, concert, fear, foy vance, fraction, Healing, mom, nashville, pathology, radiation oncology, radiation therapy, radiation treatment, sharon spencer, uab, week 4
Posted on September 6, 2017
by Valerie Powell
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Things have been so up and down, that I don’t even know where to start. Just last week we went from getting perfectly clear results from my PET scan on Tuesday morning to getting Strata test results back on Thursday, finding out there’s a… Continue Reading “Teenage Mutated Ninja Valerie”
Category: ReflectionsTags: adenoid cystic carcinoma, atm, atm mutation, birmingham, cancer, cancer blog, clinical research, clinical trials, dna, eddy yang, fear, genetic testing, genetics, pathology, radiation oncology, radiation therapy, sharon spencer, strata, strata trial, uab hospital
Posted on August 24, 2017
by Valerie Powell
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**WARNING: Images included in this post may be hard to look at due to…reality** This journey has brought about emotions in me that seem to overwhelm me just enough that I cry. I actually hate crying, and I’m more than capable of going 6+… Continue Reading “Ready, Set, Simulate”
Category: How did we get here?, Treatment UpdatesTags: adenoid cystic carcinoma, birmingham, cancer, cancer blog, ct scan, dentist, fear, parotid gland, radiation oncology, radiation therapy, salivary gland tumor, sharon spencer, simulation, skin toxicity, stabilization mask, tumor, uab, uab hospital
Posted on August 14, 2017
by Valerie Powell
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This whole cancer thing has kind of been swept under the rug for the last few weeks as life settled back into some sort of normalcy after the path report had come back. But as you can imagine, so much of what we have… Continue Reading “Radiation Consultation”
Category: How did we get here?, Treatment UpdatesTags: adenoid cystic carcinoma, birmingham, cancer, cancer blog, consultation, parotid gland, parotidectomy, pathology, radiation oncology, salivary gland tumor, sharon spencer, tumor, uab