Long Overdue Update About My Health

This post will make up for what it lacks in timelessness with incoherence, typos, run-on sentences, and incompleteness

To my amazing and wonderful (and sometimes ridiculous) readers on this amazing and wonderful (and sometimes ridiculous) platform,

I haven’t been able to send you updates about this delicious battle I am having with metastatic melanoma. In my liver! In my spleen! ⬅ Chant this to the tune of your favorite song. When I was pregnant with my third child, I biked with my two toddlers in the bike trailer and we went up enormous hills. It was … ridiculous … and I was … insane … but I was very committed to always biking (please capitalize always here, in your mind. When you do it in a post it’s like shouting. No bueno. We may be writing this in the wee hours of the night and we may already have a wee headache so no shouting por favor). So my daughters would chant to help me get up the hills: “You can do it! You can do it! We know you can! We know you can!” I’m rather imagining the “In my liver! In my spleen!” to the tune of those two little girls inspiring their mama to make it up the hill.

I’ve wanted to. I’ve thought of you. I’ve tried to read your comments and messages. I’m grateful for all of them.

(Even the ones that are about me buying large quantities of the only thing I need to heal that the messenger happens to sell.)

Here is where the old Jennifer would apologize.

Here is where the new Jennifer is trying very hard to show compassion for herself for not being able to meet her responsibilities because she’s been too sick with metastatic uveal melanoma.

And the new Jennifer—this wise lady whose stomach is bloated at 4:00, whose upper molar has gone back to God now too along with her left eye, and whose hair is graying and being unruly instead of fabulously curly and cute like it sometimes used to be—also understands that readers have free will and each is on their own journey and the ones that are angry will be angry and the ones who feel burdened by her health updates will feel burdened (why not? She feels burdened by them too. Capitalize she here. No yelling. Because of the wee headache) and the ones sending her so much love and so many prayers will continue to love her and pray for her even though she’s been so desperately wanting to tell them all the things and so desperately unable.

The rest of this post is behind a paywall.

It’s personal and there are some very sad photographs and hard things to read. Plus a whole gallery of the Spanish phrases I’ve been memorizing. If you’re part of my paid community, I am so grateful for your support and I’m also aware that I’m jumping all over the place and a bit incoherent, which is what happens on so little sleep and so many hard things.

I ask only that you not share the photos all over the internet.

(And if you do, I also realize that I took that risk and I take the responsibility for having done so and you not keeping the photos on Team Jennifer only is about you, not about me. See above about old Jennifer versus new Jennifer.