Last week, I concluded a chapter in my book of life.
This chapter was one I didn’t think I would get to finish. There were many times I thought it would be my last.

It included being diagnosed, the initial weeks of shock, and coming to terms with the life I thought I was going to have.
It included the first year of treatment and learning to adjust to this new life of living with terminal cancer.

It also included the birth of Benny and James, and marrying Chris.
I think of the opening to this chapter as the day I found out I was pregnant.
And I think of its closing as the events of the past week.

On Monday, I had my final meeting with Dr. Anand, my first oncologist. She is retiring after a decades-long career in oncology. I remember meeting her for the first time on Halloween 2022. The twins were a little over two weeks old. Chris, Hadassah, and both of my parents came. Halloween was a Monday, and the night before, I had gotten my first PET scan results. Reading that report, I felt my body go numb. I had never read a radiology report before. I had metastasis to my bone, to my liver, and on multiple lymph nodes.

The prior Thursday, Dr. Dae, the pulmonologist from the ER, had called to tell me that yes, in fact, I did have lung cancer and it was going to be staged at 4 because of the plural effusion and the lymph node that crossed my chest from the plural effusion.
Those days felt like years. I was in the darkest of holes.

Leaving Dr. Anand’s office Monday afternoon was the first glimpse of optimism I had. Chris and I went to eat ice cream and had a little hope for the first time in weeks.
In her very thick Indian accent, talking a mile a minute, she said:
“You are young. You will have a genetic mutation. You will take targeted treatment and you will be on it for years. The spots lighting up — that’s okay. The medicine will go after all of them… Things will be fine.”

She told me about another patient who had been on targeted treatment for seven years. She said they keep coming out with new meds…
“You will be around for a long time. No chemo. No radiation.”

She was the light I so desperately needed at that time.
We had a great relationship over the past 2.5 years. She loved how involved I was in ALK Positive. When I wanted lung surgery, she gave me a homework assignment to talk to other Stage 4 patients who had lobes or wedge resections. Once I did it and reported back, she brought my case up at the tumor board, and I was approved for surgery.

Every time I asked for something — no matter how silly or unreasonable she may have thought it was — she let me do it. Especially in those early days of nonstop panic.
She was a blessing. I will miss her.

On Wednesday, Benny and James had their last day of preschool at Gan Israel in Santa Monica. It was a truly magical place.
When they started in August, we had already been to several Mommy and Me sessions there. But this was going to be their first time away from home all day — without me, and not at my parents’.

I wasn’t expecting much. I thought: They’ll go, they’ll learn, they’ll interact, they’ll have some Jewish experiences.
But it was so much more than I could have imagined. I became real friends with the other moms. We went to shul there on Shabbat. The boys thrived and loved it. They grew so much.

I loved it for them — the environment, the people, their teachers.
Hearing them say “Amen” after blessings and asking for challah warmed my Jewish mom heart.

At their farewell party, I was the mom walking around ugly crying.
I couldn’t even hold it together long enough to say goodbye to everyone.
It was a highlight of this chapter.

And on Friday, Chris and I moved into our new house in Agoura Hills.

I vividly remember moving day in June of 2022. I was five months pregnant.
I was moving in with Chris, Jack, and Maria, and I thought:
We can make this work until Chris finishes school in June.

I remember sometime in the first three months post-diagnosis, feeling the heavy sadness that we would never move again — because I was going to die, and Chris would need help with the kids.
I also remember thinking I could never strap Chris with a massive mortgage and then die.

I had to let go of that lifelong dream, that bucket list item, of buying and living in my own home.
I’ve owned homes, but they were rentals. I’ve never gotten to design, decorate, and live in my home.

When I made it through my first year of treatment and saw that my medicine was holding, I made the decision to start living again, not just planning for my death. Suddenly, buying a home and moving to Agoura — something I’d talked about since Chris and I met — came back into the realm of possibility.

We closed escrow on my 39th birthday last December.
We rented the house out for six months so that Jack and the twins could finish out their school years. And last Friday, we moved in.

This week — in typical girl fashion — I chopped off all my hair to complete the chapter.

This chapter began with a pregnancy test.
It has included unimaginable hardships, and incredible, unexpected turns.

When I think about life, I see the full spectrum, the high highs and the low lows.
I was diagnosed with terminal cancer — but I was also welcomed into the most amazing ALK Positive community. I’ve met some of the best people I’ve ever known.

That life insurance policy I randomly got at 33 — for no real reason — has changed our lives in the most incredible way.

I got married. I had my twin boys.
But I also had to learn how to be a wife and a mother — which, holy f***ing hell, was hard.

I lived with my mother-in-law, who was the biggest help I could have ever asked for.
But I also lived with my mother-in-law — which, even in the best of circumstances, is… a thing.

Our marriage hit rock bottom. But we found our way out and to something beautiful. We don’t just run a house and raise a family together — we now run a business together. It’s incredible. We are amazing, and I am so proud of us.

I sit here writing from my desk, in my office, in our new house — looking out the window at palm trees blowing in the wind.

This has been an incredible chapter.
I’m so grateful to have lived it — and that I had the honor of concluding it, and starting a new one.

I didn’t die.
This chapter wasn’t my end.

What will the next chapter look like?
I can’t wait to find out.