Once More Unto The Breach
Tales of my second go-round with breast cancer before the age of 40, and everything since.
Guess I Can Always Take the Stairs
For close to two years now, I have been trying to make peace with the fact that my life is seemingly stuck in that murky place called limbo. Until I am finished with school, and until my dad is back on his feet, I am in professional no-woman’s-land—unable to figure out the next phase of [...]
Special Skills
At the bottom of Zach’s acting résumé, he has a section called “Special Skills” that lists the specific dialects he’s mastered and other assorted aptitudes that might turn a casting director’s head. If he played the banjo or was a ventriloquist or could juggle fire, this is the place he’d advertise. I don’t have a [...]
A Little Bit of Empowerment
It may not surprise you to learn that, as a general rule, I don’t put up with a lot of crap. One of the things that falls under my definition of “crap” is egomania. Another is power-tripping (not the same thing). A third—and this is the one that’s most relevant at the moment—is the completely [...]
And Counting
Today is the one-year anniversary of my dad’s surgery, the one that ultimately led to the complications that have had him hospitalized for 341 of the past 365 days. He is slowly, slowly, s l o w l y improving. He is gaining weight and getting stronger. He is making jokes and enjoying company. He [...]
Breast Cancer™
October is still three weeks away, but the ramp-up to Breast Cancer Awareness Month has already begun. I was in a Bed Bath & Beyond store last week and walked past a whole display of pink-tinted kitchenware. Next month’s issues of women’s magazines are hitting the newsstands, their covers trumpeting breast-cancer features. And my mail, [...]
Idea
We heard last night from a friend whose sister was just diagnosed with breast cancer. This happens with some regularity, but it always stops me dead in my tracks, because I know how awful those first hours and days can be. There’s so much happening, all at the same time, with such urgency, that it [...]
