Denise DeSio's Blog

In my last blog, which was quite some time ago, I was all about exploring my vulnerability. You’ll be happy to know that I’m over it now. I’ve learned that vulnerability is perfectly fine when one is alone. Add other people and you have to be tough.

By it’s very definition vulnerability makes you “susceptible to emotional damage.”People hurt you when you make yourself vulnerable. You let them seeyour weak spots and they poke at them. You tell them your thoughts, feelings and wishes, and they s...

Growing up with a violent mother with mental illness made me tough. Her goal was to break me, bend me to her will so I’d “grow up right.” She didn’t realize that she had to act like she loved me too. In order to protect myself, I stood my ground emotionally. No matter what she did or said to me, I vowed never to let her see me cry.

I continued to implement the strategy for most of my life, with varying degrees of success. Using asense of humor and intelligence as a shield,I built a reputation,...

A few years ago a very good friend of mine had a party. Before I arrived she had asked a number of guests, “Do these pants make me look fat?” All of them replied “NO, not at all!” The minute I walked through the door, my friend accosted me with the question. I turned her around, gave her the once-over, and said, “Nope, your butt makes you look fat.” The guests dropped their jaws in HORROR. My friend broke the silence that followed with seam-bursting laughter. “See?” she said pointing to them....

One thing is certain. There is no certainty in life. I should have learned that lesson back in 2013, when even my own body betrayed me. Still, I go on trusting that life will be reasonable, people will be worthy of my trust, and I will live happily ever after, despite the fact that this is never the case.

At the end of March, I moved back into my house, alone. I found a water leak in the pipes inside the walls that made it necessary to completely demolish both the guest bedroom and bathroom do...

Goodbye 2013! You were hell-ish. During your reign, I scored 311on the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, where “Over 300″ is the top category of stress. The surgery, that stripped me of my breasts, the wound complications that required me to spend six weeks, 24/7 on a wound vac,the six months of chemotherapy that wiped out 6 years of hair growth in 17 days, and the 28 consecutive days of radiation sessions that left me burnt to a literal crisp was stressful enough. But between chemo and radiation...

This is me after my final round of chemo. Unfortunately, after six months of treatment, there is no way to know for sure that there are no cancer cells. We can spend one billion dollars to make a telescope that can see through space to the beginning of time but there is no instrument that can detect individual cancer cells that have not yet regrouped and taken residence in another area of the body.

Since I am not a person of faith which makes me squeamish about counting on the supernatural, I...

After having lived through five of the scheduled eight chemotherapy treatments, I’m fairly convinced that no amount of nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, hair loss, or allergies to things I’ve never been allergic to before are going to kill me. I know this because each time I go for a treatment, which lasts up to five hours, I meet amazing people who dazzle me with their abilityand will to survive and thrive under the most horrendous of circumstances.

A grandmother, whose chemotherapy has been ongoing...

The more cancer takes away from me, the more creative I have to be to find things to be grateful for. For instance, I now appreciate that my ears are nice and flat and I’m relieved to know that I don’t have a lumpy head. Nobody has called me sir yet, so that’s good, and my eyebrows are hanging on for dear life, bless their little follicles.

The one thing I can be wholeheartedly grateful for is the support of my friends and family. The phone calls, the visits, the fresh squeezed juice, the ch...

The more cancer takes away from me, the more creative I have to be to find things to be grateful for. For instance, I now appreciate that my ears are nice and flat and I’m relieved to know that I don’t have a lumpy head. Nobody has called me sir yet, so that’s good, and my eyebrows are hanging on for dear life, bless their little follicles.

The one thing I can be wholeheartedly grateful for is the support of my friends and family. The phone calls, the visits, the fresh squeezed juice, the chic...

It takes time to wrap your head around the idea of baring your veins to a killer that will slowly slay your living cells one by one, so pretending to be somebody else is a good way to get through the first day of chemotherapy. Thankfully, it didn’t solely take mind control. The Cancer Center provides a funky boutique full of wigs and hats to disguise yourself, so for part of my treatment, I was Mary Tyler Moore. WWMD? Probably, she’d put on a Denise wig and pretend to be me.

“Everyone reacts d...