Brittney Tellekamp

One evening, I found myself sitting on the sofa with my mom, having another one of our cancer “hash it out sessions.” It never fails; whenever I visit, we spend...

After my radical cystectomy, I experienced severe hair loss. Although I did not end up bald, my medical team estimates I lost about 75% of my hair. I had very...

I am finally going on my first big trip since being diagnosed with bladder cancer - a 1-week cruise to the Virgin Islands. I am so excited, but also very...

I am officially a year and a half cancer free and I really don't know how to feel. Part of me wants to jump for joy and celebrate every day...

By the time I got to the front desk and said, "Hey, my hip hurts," my husband was calling me. "Did you just leave the house?"... "Yes"... "Did you tell...

Being a young woman diagnosed with bladder cancer, the thing I'm most often asked is, "How did it happen?". I've told my diagnosis story many times, and each time I...

I am a sex-positive person. I think education and conversations surrounding sex and intimacy should be normal. I am even more passionate about these conversations being part of all the...

You're so brave. I'm so inspired by you. You're doing so great. You are so strong - blah, blah, blah. I have heard all of this and pretty much every...

We can all agree that our pets are very intuitive. They just seem to "know" when something is wrong and, in their own way, try to help. Early on in...

Let me start there. You are so beautiful and have an inner strength that will change lives, even if you don't know it yet. You have suffered in silence, with...

Let's get in the time machine and go back to September 2019. I was freshly healed from my radical cystectomy, starting to get acquainted with having a urostomy and grappling...

There I stood at my bathroom counter, a third failed bag in the trash, and staring daggers at my stoma. Nothing I did could get my ostomy bag to stick...

I have declared 2023 as the year I will reclaim my normal. In 2019 I was diagnosed with what should have been terminal bladder cancer. 2020 brought about COVID. 2021...

Maybe we can blame it on the emergency surrounding my surgery, and maybe we can say the post-op complications were taking precedence. But before and even after my surgery, I...

Music has always been an integral part of my life. Even as a baby, my parents said I was always dancing and bouncing whenever there was a tune playing. As...

From the day of my diagnosis, I have always been "different." I was too young (only 28 years old at diagnosis). I was a woman. I had never smoked or...

Once faced with a cancer diagnosis, your entire focus tends to shift to caring for your body. Staying hydrated, eating well, prepping for procedures, dealing with treatment after effects, and...

On July 25th, 2019, everything stopped. It was like my world froze into place, and here we are now, and it feels in many ways like I am still frozen...

Summer has arrived in the southern United States, and the weather is sweltering. It's not unusual for the heat indexes here to reach the triple digits and this brings along...

A theme that has run consistently through my cancer journey has been timing. Everything has always happened in timing that has been eerily just the way it needed to happen...