Are you a Cancer Buddy or a Cancer Bully? What's a Cancer Bully? I regard a Cancer Bully as anyone who belittles or is being judgmental about a patient's experience. Examples include: Talking about a person's condition behind his back without asking him how he is doing. Making assumptions about a patient's ability or inability […]
Every 30 seconds, someone in the United States is diagnosed with cancer. Last year, at age 37, I was one of those people. I needed a lumpectomy to remove the two cancerous areas in my right breast, six rounds of chemotherapy and 30 sessions of radiation. I knew that treatment would be tough, but I […]
In late May, I started an oral medication, tamoxifen, to block the estrogen in my body in the hopes of preventing my cancer from returning. (Research has shown that tamoxifen is as helpful as chemotherapy in that regard.) On one full dose and four half doses over the course of five days, my body expressed […]
If a person is diagnosed with breast cancer, a doctor runs tests on the cancer cells to determine if they are: 1. Estrogen receptor positive; 2. Progesterone receptor positive; and 3. HER2/neu positive. What does that even mean? Well, for the first two, do estrogen and progesterone (hormones that naturally occur in the body) cause […]
A year ago today, I was sitting in my stylist’s chair at my hair salon, when my cell phone vibrated in my lap. I saw that it was Sibley Hospital and excused myself to answer the call. As I remember how I felt when I heard the news from my doctor that I had cancer, […]
Eleven years ago, I was in the middle of treatment for breast cancer. I was diagnosed with an aggressive strain at an early stage. I wrote a lot about cancer and how tough chemo was for me. Some called me an inspiration. Some said I used cancer to get attention for myself or my blog. […]
In my previous post, we learned about perimenopause (also known as pre-menopause) and that there are three stages of menopause: Perimenopause Menopause Postmenopause Remember I mentioned how being “in menopause” seems like a misnomer since menopause isn’t a discrete event? Well, I also feel that way about classifying menopause in stages. It gives the impression […]
Twelve years ago this week, I wrote my first blog post. The topics I’ve written about have changed as my life did – from my dating debacles to sexual health to cancer to parenthood to diversity in education. And, today, I’m shifting gears again to write about something that I almost avoided posting about: Menopause. […]
10 years ago this week, I sat down at my laptop and clicked on WordPress.com. I didn’t think much about my handle and template, as I set up a blog. Within an hour, I wrote my first post about getting asked out by a younger man and pressed publish. The act of blogging was simple. […]
It was Fall 2008 when I first saw her. My life was so different then. This was before the blog, when I was finishing my graduate thesis and planning to return to legal services. I had been thinking about moving to a pet-friendly apartment and getting a dog, and I kept coming back to this photo on HART’s […]