La Cristina Dice

Fifteen years ago, my mom's hair started dramatically falling out from her chemo treatments.  She asked my uncle to shave her head so it...

I'm a week out of my first chemo treatment and I'm struck by the connection between my mother, my daughter and myself.  First, while...

This morning Catalina randomly asked me "mommy your owie doesn't hurt anymore?" I told her it does still hurt, and it would li...

...more of a random cancer thought. I'm patiently (read impatiently), awaiting for a pathologist in an unknown lab to look at the DNA of...

My daughter has been really into the movie Trolls lately.  Princess Poppy (a main character in the movie) believes life is all cupcakes and ...

I am a week out of the operating room and the  final pathology report came in today . That is the operating room I was in for seven hours wi...

We often look for big miracles in life. When my cousin Mikey died, I thought I would wake up from the nightmare and realize it was just a ho...

Sitting in the plastic surgeon's office waiting for a consultation on an unusually busy day, I was struck by the diversity of women I kn...

Daughter: Mama can you carry me? Mother: Yes. Daughter: Your owie doesn't hurt anymore? [ worried about the biopsy site ] Mother: No...

...I have Cancer... I have cancer.  How do you tell people?  "how are you? Me? I'm great, but I have cancer." How do you te...

I am 35, and I've had my first scare with the big scary C word, cancer. My mom was 42 when she was first diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer...

May 2016 My daughter is only 2 and she is building her vocabulary, but already I can tell from her words the life lessons she is learning. ...

A while back I wrote how Words Matter .  I've always believe in the power of words. Maybe that is why I love to read so much.  In high s...

Sometimes you get signs and you don't know what they mean and sometimes it hits you like a ton of bricks and the point is so obvious, th...

My Dearest Catalina, You are growing up so fast! There are so many memories I want to keep, like this morning when you said "I see th...