The Liz Army:
A blog

Patient. Patient advocate. Researcher. Student.

There are more than 500 posts here. Use this search to look for something specific. Good luck!

A note about my oldest posts: I began blogging about brain cancer in 2008, at age 29. I had no background or knowledge about healthcare when I started. Please excuse typos and other misconceptions. What you read here is me in real time, like a time capsule.

Surviving Liz Salmi Surviving Liz Salmi

The meaning of the cancer tattoo

The octopus in my tattoo represents a combination of things. It is the chemotherapy drug that, once passed through the blood-brain barrier, seeps through my brain tissue, finds the tentacles of my tumor, killing cancerous cells. The octopus can also represent a mental image of a smart creature protecting me from the claws of a crab.

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