Hi, everyone. I'm Joanna. And I'm Jenny. And this is hyphenated, the podcast about living in the hyphen. Was that normal, Jenny? Did I sound normal? I feel like I sounded pretty normal. Yeah. Good for me. Good for you. No, I mean, if you all follow Joanna on social media, you've

probably seen that she's been going through a lot of medical stuff this week. And we wanted to

bring you all up to speed because you're our listeners, part of our community, and pretty much

familia. So, sin pena, we wanted to let you know what's going on.

So this week, I went for a routine removal of a cancerous spot that was on my face.

And it turned out to be a much worse tumor than we had expected.

But thankfully, I am now in literally the best hands in the world.

And after some procedures and surgeries over the next year, I'm going to be brand spanking new.

I'm going to be like, look at that. Joanna, that scar is hot, and she's looking spry as fuck, is what I'm,

that's what I'm hoping.

But, you know, it's been really hard because although I'm, you know, and tomorrow I have my

meeting with my oncologist just to make sure that all the cancer is out and that we're

looking at a recovery versus more treatment. There's something to be said that that has sort of

shocked me. And Jenny, you've gone through like illnesses and chronic illness. But I'd never been in a situation other than my arm surgery when I had to like basically

reconstruct my arm because I had a really bad bike accident.

But other than that, I've never felt defined by my health.

Like I never felt like my identity and my personality was sort of cloaked in this identity of like

cancer or tumor or, you know, skin cancer. Like, you know, I go into this hospital, which is a

cancer hospital and I, I can't stop trying to be funny with everyone I meet because I'm like I'm not I'm not my

weird face cancer okay I'm like this comedian and in every turn I make I just try to make it

make it about me being a person not about the illness or the disease.

And this is one of the reasons why I can't step away from hyphenated, because this is part of who I am and I refuse to not be who I am. So over the course of the next few weeks, I'm going to be around.

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