Martha Carlson

May 26, 2023

Integrating a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis with the life you have takes time and effort.

April 18, 2023

Is it always one or the other? Can good news in one person’s cancer experience do good for the community?

April 04, 2023

Sometimes, hundreds of pages of cancer information still just doesn’t connect with the person who needs it.

March 16, 2023

I’ve had three colonoscopies within five years and am still colorectal cancer-free.

February 28, 2023

Research backs up my personal experience regarding aging and cancer.

February 06, 2023

The new year brings reflection on living fully with cancer.

January 12, 2023

After I was diagnosed with cancer, some people “ghosted” me, but my dog, Iris, never did.

December 28, 2022

Having cancer care denied or delayed is not a harmless situation when your life is on the line.

November 28, 2022

It isn’t enough to say that cancer clinical trials need more diversity and patient support; we must take action.

November 01, 2022

When people say. “It’s just $35 to see a specialist,” they miss the entire issue of cancer-related financial toxicity.

October 11, 2022

I wish “Pinktober” was more about saving the people who will die from breast cancer and less about pink ribbons and sexualizing the disease.

September 16, 2022

Extra years with my family meant missing out on a free trip granted to patients with cancer who have children under the age of 18 — and I’m OK with that.

August 30, 2022

I’m giving cancer’s “battle language” an update and focusing my survivorship plan on emotional wellbeing and honesty.

July 22, 2022

This year, I returned to the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, where I heard about the latest advancements in cancer care, as well as met with fellow patients and advocates.

July 08, 2022

I typically don’t use cancer labels, such as “survivor” or “thriver,” but when I heard about COVID-19 “long-haulers,” the term resonated with me.

June 10, 2022

Cancer and its treatments can affect oral health, though when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, the thought of seeing the dentist slipped my mind.

June 02, 2022

I’m not going to worry that I’m changing my own health by saying out loud that this cancer stuff is hard and scary and kills way too many people every single day.

May 26, 2022

When I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, I was comforted by a simple phrase my oncologist told my husband.

May 09, 2022

When it comes to both COVID-19 precautions and life with cancer, I feel like I have to sacrifice some privacy to gain understanding from the people around me.

April 15, 2022

When I was first diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, I did not know there were so many other people like me until I attended Living Beyond Breast Cancer’s Conference on Metastatic Breast Cancer.

March 02, 2022

I’ve recently joined the masses in catching up with routine health care that was put off during the COVID-19 pandemic.

February 08, 2022

After my cancer diagnosis, I was thrust into a world where I rarely understood what was happening to me. An easy-to-understand “cancer vocabulary” would have surely eased my confusions.

December 22, 2021

A patient with cancer writes about trying acupuncture as another potential tool to lessen the effects of chemo-induced peripheral neuropathy and offers advice for other patients on how to possibly deal with the debilitating side effect.

November 30, 2021

A woman with metastatic breast cancer simplifies common terms used in guidelines for privacy of patients in clinical trials. “If we want to take down cancer, we have to find confidence in a system that wasn’t designed to protect us,” she writes.

November 04, 2021

Seven years into a diagnosis of stage 4 breast cancer, one woman has also nurtured hope.

October 26, 2021

Even in the doctor’s office, the words patients hear can cover up the realities of stage 4 breast cancer. “He thought he was offering hope but what he was doing was denying my reality and minimizing the deaths of so many people,” writes a woman with metastatic breast cancer.

October 19, 2021

A woman with metastatic breast cancer looks back on the happy memories she made this summer and how she uses them as strength in the face of cancer. “Sometimes, when we’re lucky, the scale tips toward the good,” she writes.

October 13, 2021

I am in awe of what scientists have been able to discover, but we don’t know enough for those 119 women who will die this Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day, nor for the 43,881 others who will die before the next Breast Cancer Awareness Month rolls around. We deserve more.

September 01, 2021

A woman with breast cancer writes about how patient advocates are pushing for better research into optimal treatment in metastatic breast cancer.

July 27, 2021

“Each of us has our own way of marking what cancer brings to our lives, sometimes in a simple three-letter word,” writes a woman with breast cancer.