Rio de Janeiro. Just the name of it conjures up images of an exotic beachfront, surrounded by an iconic landscape and a city filled with fun-loving people. I have wanted to go to Rio since I was very young and heard about a little party they like to call Carnival. Unfortunately Carnival this year is…
Last week Jon and I officially began our summer break. Having spent my formative years in the northern hemisphere, it seems strange to crank up the barbeque and watch the temperatures soar into the upper 90s around the same time that Dear Ole St. Nick readies his reindeer and sled for his round the world…
Here I am, day two of hospital stay, and I am extremely anxious to leave. My doctors are at loggerheads as to whether or not I actually have an infection. My older, Chilean, plastic surgeon thinks that I do and is very adamant that I stay here. Dr. Buhler (my savior) has visited me…
Yesterday started out like any regular Monday. Unfortunately it ended with me in tears, throwing a no-holds-barred temper tantrum in the doctor´s office. Despite my passionate and sorrowful pleas, here I am, back at Clinica Alemana, pissed off and swollen-eyed, wishing I was at school, or really anywhere that they doesn´t serve you sickeningly sweet…
This week has not been the most fun week of my life, but in a way it was cathartic, as it signaled the final step in my long journey to recovery. On Tuesday afternoon I received reconstructive surgery on both breasts in an attempt to make my body look normal again after my mastectomy last…
A year is comprised of 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes and countless seconds. Depending on your circumstances, a year can drag by as slowly as a thousand dreary afternoons waiting in line at a civil service office. Or it can go by so quickly that you feel the force of its…
This isn´t the sexiest title I´ve ever come up with, but I do have some more cancer related information to impart to you, so this will have to do. Today is Saturday and here I am, bright and early at Clinica Alemana, receiving my antibody treatment. Jon was a trooper and set the alarm at…
Have you ever had one of those days that are so full of joy that you just want to bottle the euphoria up in a jar and save it forever? Last Sunday, teetering on my skis high atop a snowy mountain in the Andes, I wanted to do just that. There I was, 10…
It´s official: Friday, July 12th, I finished active treatment for stage four breast cancer!!! After eight cycles of chemotherapy, a mastectomy surgery, 25 days of radiation, and ten months of emotional hell, I can now focus on putting cancer in my rear view mirror and attempt to regain a sense of normalcy in my life.…
Neither my mother nor I seem to remember where the nickname Mimsa actually came from. I vaguely recall it being an adaptation of the name Simba, the adorable cub in the Lion King. I clearly remember falling in love with that movie and requesting the Elton John soundtrack tape ad nauseum on several years´…
The Luckiest Unlucky Girl 