Name change from Natalie Richardson to Natalie Allan

Back to work I go - I have cancer to write about, experience to share, fellow patients and warriors to help through their crappy time the way others helped me through mine (and still do). I have learned a lot in the past couple of years about my health and...

Notes on the journey I didn't plan to take... Motherhood, Melanoma, and making it to my Maserati

In the past year I have gathered quite a collection of concerned medical professionals, they invite me to their workplaces and give me rafts of paper and needle pokes and bruises and they work to keep me alive; I learn from them, I get scars from them, they make me cry, they make me laugh, they confuse me and they amuse me. Time for me to give something in return...

Natalie Richardson shares the stress of packing school lunches for her teenage daughters and how cancer changed her attitude.

Google's reminder of it being Chinese--oopsie - now politically correct to say LUNAR-- New Year prompted me to re-read my Chinese Zodiac information, reminding me of some fun stuff I already know about myself.  Over my many years of varied life experiences, several therapists, and some career-related behavioural study of my personality traits, I know the following: I am an ENTP, Fire Dragon, Gemini - so take that cancer!!

Living with a cancer diagnosis is hard work. For two years I have been traveling a confusing and grueling journey, comparing my experience with that of being on a roller coaster: fast-moving and with out-of-control highs and lows.

Two years ago, my daughter saved my life. In the doctor’s office for her sore throat, she urged me to have our physician look at my mole. The mole I had had on my hip all my life, the mole that had changed colour and shape over the course of six months, the mole I had been putting off having looked at due to my hectic mother-with-career life...

All this talk about melanoma has almost made me feel badly about neglecting my other cancer baby: papillary thyroid cancer. 577 days ago, a few months into my melanoma diagnosis, I was diagnosed with a second "primary" cancer, a tumor on my thyroid gland.  It appeared on my CT scans for melanoma and I was instantly referred to the head of Head & Neck Surgery at Sunnybrook, in late September, 2014.  I had surgery to remove the tumor - and my thyroid gland as well as 2 of 4 parathyroid - in Dec 2015

The recent awareness campaign #MelanomaHeroes speaks to me on an even more personal level, as it afforded me the opportunity to publicly thank the two most important people in my life: my twin daughters.

www.escarpmentmagazine.ca

May is Melanoma Awareness Month. It is also Lupus Awareness Month, and that of Hepatitis, Mental Health, Celiac, Stroke, Allergy, and even Motorcycle Safety. A designation of “Awareness Month” gives voice to survivors of their given affliction. It also opens communication for caregivers or those working to cure or prevent harm from said disease or trauma, or those who mourn a loved one who may have lost their battle.

I recently participated in the launch of a skin cancer awareness campaign, which featured real-life experience through the use of photography. An e-book, called “Melanoma Through My Lens Reflection Project,” was created online to...