Making a Living

If I had not been a writer, I think I would have gone bankrupt early on in my years of living with cancer. I worked, and made a decent full-time salary, for seven years while undergoing treatment almost continuously.

It was only in January 2006 that I hit the wall with the chemo drug I was on (oral Xeloda) and finally decided that I needed to go on Social Security Disability. (Not that my sons and I could live on the amount we receive, but that’s another story, one I’ll tell soon.)

Until that time, however, I had been able to keep going financially, mostly by writing about cancer.

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. I wrote the diary as a freelancer, and I was also working for OnHealth half time as a copy editor. I was paid as a contractor for my copyediting work, with no benefits or health insurance.

After I was fired by OnHealth in early 2000 while in treatment for the first recurrence of my cancer, I took a full-time job as editorial director with a start-up health and fitness Web site. I told my boss that I would need to leave early some days because I was still recovering from three months of chemo and radiation, and he was very accommodating. (It turned out my boss’s mother had had breast cancer—nothing like first-hand experience to bring understanding.)

When it became apparent that this Web site would never get out of beta, my lovely boss took me to lunch and suggested I start looking for another job. I did, and landed briefly at yet another Web-based business, which, although I didn’t realize it, was also struggling to stay afloat.

In this job, there was no accommodation, and I soon realized that I could not work a 40-plus-hour week with a demanding boss in a high-pressure environment. I bailed after four months--with people being laid off right and left around me--and landed a gig with MSN as a columnist.

This was the perfect job for me.

All I had to do was produce one 1,000-word column a week and e-mail it in, and we could live on my income from the column. My editor and I met every few months for a brainstorming breakfast, and that was it. I think I went into the office once in the two years I wrote, “Smart Parenting,” which was supposed to be a parent’s take on kids and education.

While I was still writing “Smart Parenting,” I began writing for the Web site of the cancer center where I was getting treatment at the time. When the MSN column ended, most of my work was for the cancer center, and again, I could make a full-time income while working four or five hours a day. Plus, since I worked from home and was my own boss, taking time “off” for doctor’s appointments and chemo treatments was not an issue.

When I decided that I needed to go on disability, I was surprised to learn that I could continue to work part-time. Disability allows me to make up to $830/month, net, with no cut in benefits. I don’t make nearly that much, but I teach two night classes a year, fall and winter, at the UW Extension, and take an occasional freelance writing assignment. And I write this blog, which I hope will bring in a small income once the traffic numbers climb a bit.

I feel incredibly fortunate that I was able to continue working for so long. I could not have done so if I were not able to freelance—very few employers offer the flexibility and understanding that I needed.

Not all careers lend themselves to freelancing, of course, but I get phone calls once in a while from people who want to talk about continuing to work while in cancer treatment, and my response is usually that self-employment is the way to go, especially if you don’t need your job to keep your health insurance.

Ha. Health insurance. I've written about it briefly, but that’s yet another topic for another day.

Some of my MSN columns are still live on the Web. Here are a couple of samples.

The first one was one of my most widely read and hotly debated columns. Please don't e-mail me to continue the debate on teachers and boys. I wrote this five or six years ago and I'm talked out on the issue.

Do Teachers Dislike Boys?

Choosing a School for Your Child

@ Jeanne Sather 2006

Comments

[Jeanne]

A bonus of freelancing: I work in bed most of the time, propped up on a pile of pillows with my laptop (an iBook G4, lovely little machine) on my knees.

Dogs are under the bed, three cats surround me.

I'm sure I'm not the first to discover that sweats take you from day to night comfortably, and prevent being caught at the front door in your jammies in mid-afternoon. Also good for running the garbage out to the curb, walking the dog, etc. (Although I sometimes garden in my robe. No one on the block has said anything, yet.)

The cancer patient fashion statement. I think I wore sweat pants and men's flannel shirts for the entire first year from my mastectomy on. The shirts are soft, and it wasn't quite so obvious that I didn't have a boob on the right side.

More on boobs later.