Coming Fall 2024

So they say you have cancer. Yeah, they told me that, too, a long time ago. They said it was terminal.

 

I was diagnosed in 2006. After a decade of nonstop treatment, three stem cell transplants (this photo from the 3rd in 2014), and roughly 30 chemo drugs—approved and experimental—I achieved what the doctors said was, by then, impossible: Complete Remission (CR). In the eight years since, I have enjoyed five years of CR and had two more mini-transplants. I am happy, healthy (back in CR for a third time), and have found my purpose: helping you through cancer.

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You may be at the beginning of this journey, or have some experience with it by now. I’ve lived much of it and hope that my story and words open a space for healing in your body, heart, and soul.

 

My name is Deanna Schneider. I am a 56-year-old mom of two grown kids. Our family has been living with my terminal cancer diagnosis for 18 years. My daughter was six, my son was 18 months, and I was 38 in 2006 when I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood/bone marrow cancer of which we’d never heard. I had been married for eight years.

 

Multiple myeloma is a disease known to favor our Black community, and even then only the older gentlemen of that population. I was a 38-year-old white woman—an odd bird to be sure—and of great interest to the doctors. To them, being young and otherwise healthy was synonymous with being resilient to toxicity. That earned me a place at the table of every treatment and trial known. 

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The cancer care system is a massive behemoth that’s hard to manage. Learning how to interact with all these new parts of your life requires an enormous amount of energy at a time when you have very little to spare. My hope is to provide you with distilled information before you need it, and shortcuts around problems when you do.

 

I am writing to you, my brothers and sisters on this journey, to ease your way, to offer new ideas for coping, and to prepare you for the pitfalls in the road ahead. Take my hand and we will walk it together. There will be good times and scary times, highs and lows. The cancer experience is a notorious roller coaster. Sometimes it can even make you a little nauseous. 

 

I am here to give you strength and a helping hand (and a barf bag if necessary). If I do this well, we can prevent some of the hard things headed your way before they arrive, and at the very least, take the very best care of you when they do. 

 

You are not alone. Let’s do this.