About 30% of people diagnosed with breast cancer at any stage will develop distal metastasis. I am one.
Liza Weeks Mayeske, a young mother of two little boys, died yesterday from metastatic breast cancer. It happened so fast. On June 19th she posted this on her public Facebook page: I’m still on oxygen and bed and wheelchair ridden, but my tachycardia seems to have gotten a little better...
Today I am pleased and honored to present a guest post by my friend Holly Lamont. Holly is only 40 years old and she has had to retire from the job she loved because of metastatic breast cancer. This post was her Facebook status on June 5th, and she has...
Jude Calligros. Victoria Ford. Kristi Frazier. Jaime Spring. These ladies, four of my sisters in mets, died this weekend. As hard as I try not to make their deaths about me, it feels like it is about me. That thing that killed them is going to kill me –...
I am very pleased to reblog Elisabeth Cramer’s excellent post “Drowning in Pink” with her kind permission. Elisabeth does a wonderful job of summarizing the story of how the current Kohl’s-Komen campaign has co-opted Metavivor’s tag and theme without permission. Please check out Elisabeth’s blog Pugtato: Adventures in Creativity and Teamwork....
Maybe you know the 1909 poem by Thomas Hardy, “The Dead Man Walking” or the 1993 book by anti-death penalty activist Sr. Helen Prejean , Dead Man Walking, or the 1995 film that was based on the book. Hardy’s poem is about a life of disappointment and rejection, about depression. The...
Let’s talk about insomnia. For the past several weeks, I’ve been coping (with varying degrees of success) with insomnia. This is not uncommon in cancer patients and seems to be linked to cancer-related fatigue, as well. I hate taking any kind of drug that fuddles my mind, so I avoid...
Here is something silly and senseless: “You may not have lived much under the sea—” (“I haven’t,” said Alice)—”and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster—” (Alice began to say, “I once tasted—” but checked herself hastily, and said, “No, never”) “—so you can have no idea what...
If my tears could water the ground and nourish the seed that sprouts and grow the plant that bears fruit this wouldn’t happen any more. The ugly growth of metastasis would be no more. The doctors would no longer say, “We did our best; we’ll keep you comfortable.” There would...
Soft, sad music. The screen is dark; a man’s sad face appears. “I wish I had testicular cancer,” he says. His face is replaced by a sad woman who says, “I wish I had breast cancer.” The gentle voiceover, a woman’s voice, says, “Early diagnosis saves lives,” as some symptoms...
In reference to Ms Keller’s astonishing piece “Forget funeral selfies. What are the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness?” published online on 8 January 2014. First, my full disclosure: Like Lisa Bonchek Adams, I have Stage IV (advanced, metastatic) breast cancer, although I am perhaps not as close to the...
