Spring/Summer/Fall 2026

Question & C/Answer…redux
with Stephanie Kemp


NOTE: 
This one is sort of a doozy, so I condensed it into a bullet poem, in case you are having a busy day but wondering where I’ve been:


So how is it going, Stephanie? It’s been a while. I see you are still wearing your hat and also sharing it with stuffed animals.
It’s true. I am still wearing my hat. Not always, but often. (I also continue to work on my sharing, even if it has to be with stuffed animals, as I still sometimes have a hard time being around people.)

I’ve worn through most of my hats and have only one black beanie (and the blue bucket) left. The attached synthetic hair is matted and stuck together now, sort of like an urban beaver tail. (This is only true when I don’t brush it at all. If I give it even the tiniest amount of care it can still look like I spent a day at the beach before riding my imaginary motorcycle up the PCH for fish tacos at the Reel Inn, which didn’t burn down because I am living in my imagination, where there were no fires and there is no cancer.)



I am only wearing the beanie today because I woke up as Adrian Zmed, which is not a bad thing unless it is not 1985 and you are not the new host of Dance Fever.



I’m actually happy to hear from you. I’ve been trying to figure out how to circle back to my friends. The original Question & C/Answer response was so overwhelming that I haven’t even answered everyone’s kind emails and calls (and old fashioned snail mail letters). Please tell any/everyone that I am going to, because I AM! am trying. (Also tell them they can skip down to the PS. below if they just want a medical update and not the 1553 words that are about to precede it.)


Will do. In the meantime,  I understand you made it to New York with your daughter and got to go to your 40th high school reunion, is that right?
Yes! (And thank you for asking - I love to talk about things that are not cancer related.)

New York never disappoints. My daughter even wrote her Common App Essay about the trip. (I’ll ask her if I can share it now that she has committed to NYU.) I also got to hang out with my best friend from college and my sisters. I had almost forgotten how much fun life can be, even in the city during a batshit summer heatwave in CrazytownUSA.






And the reunion was truly one of the best 72 hours of my life, still with the greatest friends ever. I’m just finishing a hometown PSA featuring favorite childhood haunts, me beating Scott S. (twice!) at ping pong, and the invincibility of lamb at Olga’s over hamburgers anywhere (unless it is The Hunter House). I’ll share that too, once I get some personal release forms signed and add a little piano tune I’ve been practicing.

In the meantime, here is a photo of some important hometown keepsakes:



Hmmmmm. That’s great. Even if this Question &C/Answer is a little boring.
It is, isn’t it? To be honest, I’m so sick of this ride that I don’t really even want to talk to you. (It feels good to be honest, unlike at the beginning of this interview, when I was still lying.) 

How about I just give you the update and you can just sit back and relax and enjoy?


Sure. Have at it. In all honesty, I don’t really want to be here either.
I relapsed in March, almost one year to the day that I finished chemo.

I got to nine months with clear scans and clean everything else/s. That said, the emotional and mental space a “remission monitoring” clinical trial takes up is insane. Just ask my husband or anyone who knows me, except hopefully, my daughters, as they were the intended recipients of any normalcy and fun I could conjure and distribute. (If you can’t reach my husband or anyone who knows me, you could also just read the Declaration of Helsinki to better understand the ongoing and ever-evolving challenges of participating in clinical trials. Then multiply everything you just read by a hundred and fifty.)

But I felt increasingly strong the whole time.



At the nine month trial appointment my doctor even said, “It looks like you might be one of a subset of patients who doesn’t relapse. We’re going to publish some of the study results this summer. We’ll continue with the scan schedule and monitoring, but you could probably take your chest port out now. You are the exact reason we need a control group.”

I KNEW IT! I knew my double hit diffuse large B-Cell lymphoma wouldn’t come back! (But still I left the port in because I didn’t want to jinx anything and also because I’m quite attached to it, and not just physically.)

Then (because of course), at the “Big One Year Marker!” scan, two spots lit up like tiny forward facing flashlights.  “....Probably not big enough to do a needle biopsy, especially since they’re next to blood vessels and this is not mission critical.” said the doctor. “It could still be nothing,” he continued, “but my gut tells me this is progression. We will scan you again in 4-6 weeks and try to get you into an advanced trial where we could bump you up into 3rd level treatment rather than the 2nd level treatment you would be eligible for if you stay in our current trial. As discussed, it would be a combination of three days of chemotherapy and then CAR-T treatment which, unfortunately, you would have to be admitted for and then monitored closely for physical and neurological side effects. If you are randomized into the treatment arm this time you would receive dual target therapy, if you are placed in the observation arm again you will get the single target standard of care treatment, which is also very effective. There is also a separate trial you may be eligible for that would include an autologous stem cell transplant. But for now let’s stay in the day we’re in and try to remain philosophical......You did say you left your port in, right?”


Zoinks. That’s quite an update. How is the whole philosophical thing going?
It’s actually going pretty well (especially because today I am well rested and always I am blown away by the science I get to witness and pretend to understand in real time.)



There is something strange that happens when you’ve heard the word cancer often enough as it pertains to your own body that allows you to find a new road to emotionally drunk drive on. (Don’t worry, there is no-one else on the road, it is only yours and you’re not really drunk, just swerve-y and a little out of control - always incredibly grateful every time you wake up in your own bed, safely.)

It also helps if you spend a lot of time walking under trees and writing things down.

Plus, there is real beauty in the day to day that keeps knocking on your door or punching you in the head to make you pay attention to it.

I am grateful every day that I get another one.

I am grateful for:

The clouds, the coffee, the carwash, the eggs, the walks, the returning words, the physical Sunday paper, the new store that sells old Levis, the old friends that still love me (plus some new ones that still might), time with (and everything else about) my family (mostly), Casa Bianca (always), books (again, thank god), beach days (whenever possible), the smell of clean laundry, NURSES.

I had lunch with my friend David and tried to explain this, but it sort of made me feel crazy. (I also found myself feeling jealous of the Life Without Cancer updates he had, so I called off the rest of my lunches for a while.)

I am grateful that my doctors are still aiming at my treatment to be “curative.”

The Tatiana Schlossberg “A Battle with My Blood” New Yorker essay tipped me sideways for months:

“My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids wouldn’t remember me.”

(She was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia while in the hospital after giving birth to her daughter and went straight from the maternity ward to the oncology floor. Her essay was published in November 2025, she died the next month. Her daughter is now two and her son is four.)

I am beyond grateful that my daughters are twenty-one and eighteen. That they have what they need from me inside of them. That they will remember their mom. (The first time I had a different kind of cancer they were six and three.)

My mom has been gone for six years and still shows up for me every day, even if it is only in my excessive use of butter, always being nice to strangers, or making up (excellent) songs. I never take for granted that I (get to) remember her.



I am also so grateful that my body (if not yet fully my attention span and ability to focus) has bounced back the way it has. This thinking (and feeling) will never change, although you might have to remind me that I said this, especially because in addition to all that Gratitude I also have to make lanes for:

Fear
Fury
Frustration
Sadness
Anxiety
Hopelessness
Helplessness
Exhaustion
Euphoria
Numbness
Grief
Any other emotion ever named or felt in the history of human emotions

(I almost forgot - I also feel immense JOY, even and especially when Happiness is awol.)

I am grateful that since I (I mean we) did the original fake Question & C/Answer, friends and colleagues and neighbors and strangers have come out of the woodwork sharing their own stories, their own journeys and fears, their own losses and grief and maps (and even once, socks), to keep going. It is truly amazing how many people battle this. And how brave people can be.

I was on a work zoom recently where we introduced ourselves and almost half of us started with:

“I have breast cancer... lymphoma...ovarian cancer...I just lost my...I am currently in remission...I find out next week...I just rang the bell...”

(And this is not even a cancer support group!) 

Then most of us ended with, “But that’s not why I’m here.”

Except that for many of us it is.

Not because we necessarily want to tell our cancer stories, but because we want to tell our other stories.

And keep figuring out what those are. 
 
But for now, to quote my daughters (from a much earlier time in life, and possibly, the next time I cook them dinner):

“Can I be done?”


Sure. Good luck, Stephanie. Maybe next time you can show us your hair?
I’ll just show it to you now (with a poem, of course). I am realizing how important sharing is, probably because I have been doing so little of it.


I guess all of those brave people are making me brave, too (especially because these pictures were taken on a really good hair day, if you can imagine).

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

PS. It is October now. I finished my (CAR-T and stem cell) treatment at the end of August, and it went very well. (The only things I love more than the words, ”You are in remission,” are my doctors and nurses, although it might be a tie.) My 100 Day Scan will be in December and I hope to remove my chest port just in time to turn it into a Christmas tree ornament for the holiday season. (I also love - and hear! - the words “durable cure,” in case you were worried or wondering. I am still working my way through both, but feel incredibly lucky in this high stakes game of never-ending medical whac-a-mole.)

On a (nothing but absolutely) positive note, my relapse supports the Big Picture / Do It For The Science! idea that the initial clinical trial’s “super sensitive blood test” (aka “Theranos, but for real”) does actually work. (It picked up my recurrence almost a full year before the scans did.) This is obviously awesome and a reminder of why I wanted to do the clinical trial in the first place (even though I liked it better when my cancer didn’t come back).

At least I am out of limbo (half full!) and got to have a (mostly) great summer vacation with my husband and daughters (full full!).

Plus, since it took me so long to share this edition of Question & C/Answer, it is almost Thanksgiving and Christmas (again!).

Here is a bonus poem, in celebration of all of it:



To Be Continued....(maybe.)

I’m hoping my doppelgänger will host a(n educational) slideshow, as a thank you to me for saving her from being thrown away with the hospital lunch tray...again.

(I brought her on the journey to keep me company....and curious. Plus, she reminds me to write.)






cc/xx:
Old Friends / New Friends / Family / You 

Special Thanks to:
Dave B’s socks / The Club / Belinda / Heidi / Jenna F (still) / Kate Middleton / Jack Kass / (My) Mom and Annie(’s Dad) / Any/Everyone who makes me laugh or shows up for me / Annabelle Gurwitch and Suleika Jaouad for writing things down and sharing / Lee K for that beautiful email (I am going to write you back, you’ll see!) / Susie D / My ducks + other guardians