About 30% of people diagnosed with breast cancer at any stage will develop distal metastasis. I am one.
My very dear friend Aliza wrote this response to my Valentine’s Day 2012 post. Not only a dear friend, she’s a great writer and I am delighted that she gave me permission to publish it here. Aliza, I love you. My friend was about to undergo a major operation and...
Fourteenth of February, 2004. There was a heavy snowfall. In Jerusalem that is almost as rare as it is in Los Angeles. Many streets were closed, and many people were afraid to drive on the streets that were open because, after all, Who knows how to drive in the snow in...
A smarty and funny Twitter friend and blogger recently reminded me of William Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus. Think of it as a Victorian teenage boy’s version of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. At the dawn of his adolescence, Henley was stricken by osseous tuberculosis, eventually having to endure a below-the-knee...
More than one person has asked me why I dislike identifying myself as “a survivor”, and I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. After all, I could easily call myself a cancer survivor (Have I survived yet? Part I and Part II), a survivor of terrorism (My first bus...
Today I read a post called “Pigeons” in one of my regular blog-reads, Table for One by Solitary Diner. I stopped short at this: But as I thought about it, I realized that despite having a long list of potential self improvement projects, I am fundamentally happy. Not all the time, certainly...
Since I am come to that holy room, Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore, I shall be made thy music, as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think now before. ….. This is the first...
“Didn’t you get regular check-ups? Is it in your family? Do you smoke? You bottle up your feelings too much and now your body is expressing them for you. You should meditate. You’re not eating properly. Did you or your parents ever have dealings with the occult? There must be...
When I read Robert Morgan’s poem “Maple Gall” a few days ago, the first phrases to strike me were tortured cluster of malignancies… cells grow drunk… awful excess growths and, of course, I thought of the cancer that I live with, and I was drawn in. I continued to read beauty...
