Intro to Jeanne's Diary

I began writing “Jeanne’s Diary” for the OnHealth.com Web site in the fall of 1998, just a few weeks after surgery to remove my right breast and shortly before beginning chemotherapy.

In the beginning, I wrote it as a way to make money. I needed to support myself and my children during my cancer treatment and recovery, and the opportunity was there. I’m a writer, it’s my life, so why not?

The diary quickly became so much more.

For me, it was therapy. I wrote each chapter “in the moment”–-in the too quiet hours of the early morning when it seemed the whole world was asleep but me, or whenever I was overwhelmed. I pounded it out as fast as I could type.

I wrote about my fear of chemotherapy.

I wrote about insurance problems, going bald (twice!), a young woman in my support group who died, and about my children, who struggled with their fears that I would die.

Then later, I would edit and rewrite, turning it into complete sentences with correct punctuation. I’d give it to my editor and it would go live on the Web site. Once, I dictated a chapter over the phone from the psych ward at the University of Washington Medical Center where I was hospitalized for depression.

For other women with breast cancer, the diary and the attached online bulletin board became a lively support group. Women–-and one lone man with breast cancer--would post their own stories, ask questions about different treatments, and send messages of encouragement and hope.

Then I Was Fired
Then, when I was fired by OnHealth in early 2000, my life and my story became public in a way that I had never anticipated.

I still find it almost impossible to write about. If you want to read what happened, here’s the link to the page one story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Blindsided by disease and life, she fights to survive

TV interviews followed. The wire services picked up the story, and OnHealth was bombarded with phone calls and e-mails.

This part of my story has a happy ending: I settled with OnHealth and within two weeks of the settlement, I had a better job at another health and fitness Web site.

Overall, the publicity was a good thing, but sometimes I feel a bit funny about the “breast cancer poster child” aspect of it. Am I now expected to be a model cancer patient? To never be afraid or discouraged?

It’s also humbling to find out that so many people care.

The diary covers my cancer treatment in 1998 and 1999.

A couple of years later, on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2001, I found out that my cancer had returned, this time metastasizing to my bones. One tumor broke my right arm. Dozens more were scattered throughout my bones, in the spine, the pelvis, the ribs … It gives me the willies to write about it.

I have been in continuous cancer treatment ever since. And, almost five years later, I am still alive, and life is mostly good. This blog comes out of my experiences living with cancer day by day.

@ Jeanne Sather 2006