Hi! I'm Cadence

I was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia on February 12, 2018. This is my story.

Follow Me

  • Day +592

    It’s been a while since I wrote a blog, but a lot of stuff has happened and I’ve truly been in the hardest, darkest stretch of recovery. I just couldn’t do it. This is a long one, but it’s been a long three months and my hands wouldn’t agree with me…

  • Day +498- One in a million

    In my last blog I talked a lot about this recurrent Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection that I’ve been having endless problems with. At the end of July I was hospitalized to manage the complications that the drug Foscarnet, which we were using to treat the CMV had been causing. It’s very…

  • Day +467

    I’ve talked a lot about the light at the end of the tunnel; how far away it seems sometimes. Like a finish line just out of reach, or a constantly moving target, the end never seems to truly be in sight. This time it feels the light turned out to…

  • Day +420

    It’s been almost six months since I wrote an update last and I figured it was finally time. Like many months before this, I’ve let week after week go by waiting for some kind of huge breakthrough to happen. To get close enough to the edge of this land of limbo…

  • Second Life

    A short story about life from the perspective of a transplant patient. Written by Cadence Grace for CBC short story competition in 2020. The last few days of my first life weren’t really so bad. I called it the honeymoon. My heart was still filled with hope and determination as…

  • Day 243

    Man a lot can happen in a year. This time last year I was preparing for a transplant. Filling out forms, trying to find a donor and wondering if I would make it to another Christmas. Now here I am, cancer free, feeling extraordinarily lucky and grateful to be on…

  • Day 183- Halfway Point

    It’s officially been six months since I had my Bone marrow transplant and time feels like it has somehow simultaneously flown by at warp speed, and stretched on endlessly. This is the halfway point to my next post-transplant milestone, which is to make it to the one year mark. After…

  • Day +145

    I sit down in the cheap wire chair which is about as uncomfortable as I currently feel inside. I wish I was anywhere other than here right now; that I could have just navigated all these complications on my own. I wish everything just felt easier. Most especially I wish…

  • Day 100!

    Today is a big milestone for me! It’s day 100! ?? After transplant, this is one of the first and most important goals to reach on your road to recovery. After day 100, it’s year one, and then year two. If you can make it to year two without relapse,…