Hi, I'm Amber
I'm a wife and a mom to two boys. One plays baseball and the other plays football. Most weekends you'll find me in a folding chair beside a field somewhere cheering. Home is seven acres in the Texas Hill Country that we share with two Highland cows and two Nigerian Dwarf goats. I've spent almost 20 years working as a behavior analyst. When we can slip away from all of it I chase new places and the history and culture that come with them.
Then July 2026 handed me something I never asked for. I'm living with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer of the bile ducts.
This site is where I tell that story out loud. Partly for my family and friends who want to follow along. Partly for the stranger out there searching this diagnosis at 2am the way I did. If that's you, come sit with me. You are not alone.
How It Started
- Spring 2026
The first clues were easy to explain away. The constant itching I blamed on the Texas sun and getting older. The weight loss I credited to healthier habits. Then one morning my eyes were yellow, and there was no explaining that away.
- July 17, 2026
My yellow eyes got me sent straight for blood work, and those results set off every alarm bell. From there it was on to the hospital for imaging. A CT scan, an ultrasound, and an MRI found the reason. There was a mass in my bile duct.
- July 21, 2026
I was sent back to the hospital to undergo an ERCP, a procedure meant to get a closer look at the mass and take a sample of it. Instead there was a complication, and one day in the hospital became a week. Bile duct tumors sit in a hard place to reach, so I went back again and again before anyone could get a usable biopsy.
- July 30, 2026
The biopsy results came back, and the mass finally had a name. Cholangiocarcinoma. It looks like early stage, and nothing so far points to my lymph nodes, though more testing will tell us for sure. Fingers crossed. Scary words and hopeful words in the same breath.
- August 2026
I'm working to get in front of doctors who treat this cancer regularly, because with something this rare, experience matters. Once that team is in place, we decide on a treatment plan together.
Follow along in the journal →
What I Want You To Take From This
Push for answers. If your body is telling you something is wrong, keep asking until someone listens. Rare does not mean impossible, and early does not happen by accident. It happens because somebody kept pushing.