About 30% of people diagnosed with breast cancer at any stage will develop distal metastasis. I am one.
On September 11th I posted a poem by Emily Dickinson, If pain for peace prepares. Several people found it pretty impenetrable and let me know in the comments or by email and telephone, so I thought I’d post my interpretation of the poem to see if that helps at all. Please...
So. I have Stage IV breast cancer. I am not going to get better. I am already experiencing pain and fatigue. Barring an act of God, I will most likely die within the next few years. At the same time, I can still take care of myself. I cook (a...
(When I was looking for an image for this post, I discovered there is a TV show called “The New Normal” or something like that. If that’s why you came here, sorry.) It seems to be routine all over the world to counsel cancer patients to learn to accept and...
Once upon a time there was a little middle-aged lady who didn’t feel well. She had an uninvited guest that had come to stay. The guest stayed and stayed and just wouldn’t leave. Sometimes the guest stayed quietly in a back room, so quietly that she barely remembered it was...
On Sunday I fell victim to a drive-by attack of the weepies. I had no idea what set me off, but boom! there I was – was just sitting and crying. There was little content to the tears; I just felt sad and desolate. Disconsolate. I wasn’t anxious. I just...
This poem by Ben Downing appeared in the July/August 2012 print edition of The Atlantic. By means of simple couplets and just four uncomplicated sentences, it communicates a home truth: “[umbrage] makes us less”. Umbrage Taken, given: friendships riven. From shadow or shade, it instantly puts paid to hard-won clarities and causes us...
It’s a poetry reading kind of day and I turned, as I so often do, to Emily Dickinson. Thumbing through a couple of collections, here is where I stopped (poem 749): All but Death, can be Adjusted— Dynasties repaired— Systems—settled in their Sockets— Citadels—dissolved— Wastes of Lives—resown with Colors...
Before I get to my main point, I’d just like to point out in disgust that virtually all the images that showed up when I searched for red tape women were of naked women who had indigestion (or perhaps what the photographer imagined was a sexy pout) and were wrapped up...
After speaking with my oncologist, my GP called me back this evening. The onco asked for more tests: CT scans of my chest, abdomen and pelvis. The referrals were faxed to me this evening – they’re marked “urgent”. The oncologist said that after the CTs are read she may ask...
