About 30% of people diagnosed with breast cancer at any stage will develop distal metastasis. I am one.
Well, this is strange. In the weeks and days leading up to my recent CT, I was a quivering mess of anxiety and drama. I divided my time between obsessively cleaning my house and taking advantage of the kind and patient emotional support of my long-suffering friends. (You know who...
There is a sort of religious corollary to Godwin’s Law. I am not sure exactly how to formulate it, but it seems that the longer any online discussion of public issues continues, the greater the likelihood that someone will eventually make a reference to religion as the source of injustice,...
You can’t always get what you want You can’t always get what you want You can’t always get what you want But if you try sometimes you might find You get what you need. (Rolling Stones) I was disappointed today. There was something that I wanted, not something huge, a little...
… Abyss by Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) Translation by Jerzy Peterkiewicz Abyssus abyssum invocat (*) You always see it as space filled with cascades of air where glass splinters reflect and glitter like seeds planted in distant stones. Now observe the abyss that glitters in the eye’s...
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...
Here it comes… are you ready? I am about to share with you a Major Revelation that was the result of my self-centered navel gazing and pity pot sitting of the last several weeks. Ready? Here it is: Feelings are not the boss of me. […] My fundamental happiness takes...
(Poem 917 – published 1896) Love – is anterior to Life – Posterior – to Death – Initial of Creation, and The Exponent of Earth – —– (Poem 974 – published 1925 but written the same year as 917, 1894) The Soul’s distinct connection With immortality Is best disclosed by...
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...
Some very kind friends gently chastised me today for getting too wound up in following the news, which is… well, this is the Middle East. I was reminded of a sort of saying about personal safety in an uncertain situation. I don’t know its origin. Either there will be a...
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...
