The Assertive Cancer Patient

From the E-Mail Box

Yet again, I would like to apologize for not answering my e-mail in a timely fashion. 

These days, the e-mails least likely to be answered are ones from people I don't know who are asking me to do something for them. A year or so ago, I used to jump all over these requests, and help people sort out insurance or billing messes and all sorts of problems. And I enjoyed it. 

Now, I find that I don't have the energy, the time, or, quite honestly, the interest--especially if someone wants me to take over their problems and solve them for them.

If you are writing to me for help, say with a problem with a Citibank mortgage or HELOC, before 

you e-mail me with questions, please read through that category on my blog. Because everything I've done re: Citibank is documented there, and those posts may be helpful to you. See: Citibank  

Then there are the interesting e-mails, and I try to do a round-up of these every so often. There, I have seriously fallen behind. 

Valerie

Back in April of 2009, I received a heart-breaking e-mail from a 28-year-old single mother of four whose 11-year-old son had just been diagnosed with sarcoma. The subject line on her e-mail was "My 11 year old son has cancer what do I do from now on?" which was enough to bring me to tears. 

We wrote back and forth a dozen times or so over the past year, and then last night I received an e-mail from Valerie telling me that her son was in remission and giving me the link to a newspaper article about the family. 

Ra'kem, the son, is beautiful, and I have to say he looks a LOT like his mother. 

The Make-a-Wish Foundation gave him a new TV and a Wii. See: Make-a-Wish Foundation Gives Wii   

Letting Go

My faithful friend Teri, The Cheeky Librarian, sent me a link to this story in the New Yorker: Letting Go: What Should Medicine Do When It Can't Save Your Life?

This is a topic that's been top of mind for me during the past few months, and you can find my posts at these two links: 

End-of-Life Planning

Hospice

Of course, then there is the, for me, bigger question, of how to live my life while waiting for this disease to catch up with me. Much tougher. Is a day in bed reading Dorothy Sayers a "wasted" day? 

I can't say I struggle with this question every day, but I certainly think about it as I prioritize my life, day to day. 

Tomatoes

My friend Brooke, who is also sitting and waiting for her tomatoes to ripen, sent me this: Sungold Tomato Nuggets

I don't know if I will harvest enough cherry tomatoes to make a batch, but these certainly look delicious. 

More Food

A former student of mine, Krista Winjum, has a new food blog. Champagne and Cornflakes it's called, but she seems to be writing about meat recently. How about a good cornflake recipe, Krista? 

Or something for us vegetarians?

Nap Time

I'm going to stop here, because it's time for my first nap of the day, but if you have e-mailed me about something and I haven't gotten back to you, please just send me another message. Then YOUR message will be at the top of the queue ... at least for awhile. 

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

Younger Son Checks In

 Younger Son has been without Internet access since his arrival in Fukuoka, Japan, almost a week ago, but he is finally online and sent me a long e-mail. He also set up a Japan blog, which is going to be fun. 

No photos yet, but I've asked him to e-mail me one to post.

The Japanese language is important in our family (I have a master's degree in Japanese from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and I lived in Japan for a total of seven years. I was also married to a Japanese man, Kazuhiro Babe, for about eight years, and we adopted Older Son together, 25 years ago now).

So Younger Son has been exposed to Japan and Japanese pretty much all his life, and he's been studying Japanese since he was 5. He's also made two short trips to Japan, one when he was 6, when the three of us went for two weeks, and then the "Military History Tour of Japan," a trip he and I made when he was 14. That was about a week.

Here's what he had to say about speaking Japanese:

I'm surprised with myself at how much Japanese I actually know. We held a reception after today's convocation and opening ceremony, and there were a lot of Japanese students there. I talked mostly in Japanese for an hour and a half, and while my brain hurt by the end of it, it was a great experience. 

And here is my reply:

  Despite all my teasing about your "poor" Japanese, I knew it would be pretty good once you got 

there. But isn't it amazing how you can FEEL your brain getting tired after an hour or so? That happened to me too, and I would have to switch off and just nod and smile and hope I didn't agree to anything too awful while I wasn't really listening. 

Here's the link to his new blog: Robin in Japan

 The photos: Here is a link to the post that explains the hanko in the photos. It is my Japanese "name stamp" that I passed on to Younger Son to use while he is in Japan. 

Younger Son Redeems Himself

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

Support This Blog, Please

You may have noticed a "donate" button at the bottom of some posts on my blog. A button that looks like this:

The button is there because I have decided to keep The Assertive Cancer Patient ad-free.

There are any number of ways to put ads on a blog. It's simple and easy. I tried this for a week or two when I first put my blog up. I used the ad service provided by Typepad, which hosts my blog.

But--and this is a huge BUT--most of the ads that popped up on my blog were for Web sites, products, and services that I personally couldn't endorse. And I didn't want them on my blog. An awful lot of them fell into the quacks category.

Cancer patients are fairly easy targets for exploitation--because we're sick, because we're afraid, because we'd like a magic cure that came with no side effects ... I don't want the exploitation of any cancer patient to start with an ad on my blog.

So there are none. But I still need to make some money from the blog, which takes the best hours and the best energy of my day.

The result? The donate button.

Thank you for any cash that you might be able to spare. I appreciate it more than you will ever know.

A special thanks to the cancer patients who have sent me donations, and then apologized for not being able to send more!

I know who my audience is, so I expected that if people were able to send a donation at all, it would be in the $10 to $20 range. Those $20 contributions are keeping me at the keyboard, blogging away.

If you want to read more about me, go to the About page.

A note about using PayPal: You can make a donation by clicking on the donate button and going through PayPal without setting up a PayPal account if you don't want one. There is an option to simply donate with a credit card.

@ Jeanne Sather 2010.

Wrapped in Love

I try not to get mushy--and it's not really my style--but after yesterday's post about the three wise doctors, and the response to it both from friends and loved ones in the real world as well as from my readers ... Well, I feel wrapped in love. 

And quite invincible.

So thank you. 

Not online much today, but I will try to respond to e-mails in a timely fashion. 

Younger Son and The Amazing Martha are teaming up to wash the outside windows for me today--which have not been done in a year and which are BOTHERING me. 

I am going to the post office to mail all my late jewelry orders, and this evening a group of us are going to see The Belle of Amhurst, partly because Younger Son and Megan, who is going, are both theater kids, and also as part of my newly revived interest in the classics. 

As you see, life rumbles on, but with intention and attention. 

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

Cheryl Comes to Visit

So how am I going to distract myself this weekend, when I am forced to take a break from making plans for the trip to California? 

Luckily for me, my friend Cheryl is coming to visit. She will be here in about two hours (So I guess I'd better shower and dress sometime soon). 

I'm trying to remember when Cheryl first contacted me--maybe a year ago, maybe not that long. She bought a jade bracelet from me that had a little vintage abacus charm on it. 

I met her for the first time face-to-face when Laurie and I made our recent trip to Portland, and we found we had a lot in common and a lot to talk about--cancer, yes, of course, but other things too.

The original plan was for Cheryl to stay here, but once I got the bad news she offered to stay at a hotel instead, an offer I gratefully accepted. 

We are going to have fun, in a low-key sort of way--working in my garden together (she is bringing her gloves and tools) and visiting a couple of plant nurseries, including the Chocolate Flower Farm.  

Portland Bound

Books From Powell's 

Cheryl Takes Neratinib

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

Problems WIth G-mail

Monday-morning update: The boys fixed my computer problem last night, so not only are they back in my good graces, mostly, but now I can e-mail again. Basically, the problem was that I don't routinely update my MacBook. You know, those little messages that come in? I always click, "later." And it caught up with me. 

Now I just have to catch up with the backlog of unanswered e-mails. If you are waiting for a reply from me, please e-mail me again--that will at least put you at the top of the queue.

On top of everything else, I am having problems with my G-mail account. Mail comes in just fine, but I am not able to reply. 

I have restarted the computer and done all the tricks I know, which is, admittedly, not many, but I can't get it to work. I click on the "reply" button when I have a message open, and nothing happens. 

I am going to see if one of the boys can help me with this later today, but in the meantime, if you want a reply from me, please leave a message below in the comments box, and then check back in an hour or two for my reply, which obviously will be public, so keep that in mind.  

My Typepad account is working perfectly, so the problem is not with the keyboard or with online access in general, it's with G-mail. Argh. 

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

Support This Blog, Please

You may have noticed a "donate" button at the bottom of some posts on my blog. A button that looks like this:

The button is there because I have decided to keep The Assertive Cancer Patient ad-free.

There are any number of ways to put ads on a blog. It's simple and easy. I tried this for a week or two when I first put my blog up. I used the ad service provided by Typepad, which hosts my blog.

But--and this is a huge BUT--most of the ads that popped up on my blog were for Web sites, products, and services that I personally couldn't endorse. And I didn't want them on my blog. An awful lot of them fell into the quacks category.

Cancer patients are fairly easy targets for exploitation--because we're sick, because we're afraid, because we'd like a magic cure that came with no side effects ... I don't want the exploitation of any cancer patient to start with an ad on my blog.

So there are none. But I still need to make some money from the blog, which takes the best hours and the best energy of my day.

The result? The donate button.

Thank you for any cash that you might be able to spare. I appreciate it more than you will ever know.

A special thanks to the cancer patients who have sent me donations, and then apologized for not being able to send more!

I know who my audience is, so I expected that if people were able to send a donation at all, it would be in the $10 to $20 range. Those $20 contributions are keeping me at the keyboard, blogging away.

If you want to read more about me, go to the About page.

A note about using PayPal: You can make a donation by clicking on the donate button and going through PayPal without setting up a PayPal account if you don't want one. There is an option to simply donate with a credit card.

@ Jeanne Sather 2010.

Cancer Postcards & Greeting Cards

 A woman named Lurdes e-mailed me from Portugal today to tell me about her blog, which is a collection of postcards about cancer. See: Postcard About Cancer/Hope

The most interesting people find me through my blog!

Lurdes writes that she has been in treatment for cancer, Hodgkin's disease, since March of 2008. On her blog she asks that cancer survivors write her a postcard with a message of hope. That seems like a cool project, so I e-mailed her my cancer postcard, which is the M&Ms mosaic above. 

In case you don't know the history of this postcard/mosaic, it is made entirely of pink M&Ms, which is my way of protesting against the trivializing of the disease that is going to kill me by marketing pink products that are of absolutely NO BENEFIT TO ME at all. 

If you'd like to send Lurdes a postcard, go to the link above and her mailing address is in the right-hand column. 

Cancer Greeting Cards

On a related topic, another reader posted a comment to my post about cancer greeting cards. The post is more than three years old, so it's buried kind of deep in my blog, but here is the link: 

Field Trip No. 1: To Buy a Hallmark Cancer Card 

In her comment, Olivia wrote, in part:

I have to admit I had an unexpected and very visceral reaction to these cards. While I can appreciate that some people simply don't know what to say (on more than one occasion, a well-meaning person would announce, "Well, at least you got the GOOD kind of cancer."--Really?!?!) I'm not quite sure that I would have appreciated such a card. I simply think that this is one of those times in life that a person needs to make it personal. A short note, a call, anything. That, coupled with the idea that a company is profiting off of illness is somewhat appalling to me. 

I couldn't agree more, except I would say that profiting from cancer is definitely appalling to me. And please don't write and tell me that cancer centers mark up drugs like Herceptin 100 percent--I know that. 

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

Friday ...

Now I'm not only behind on answering e-mail, but I'm also seriously behind on blogging. 

The garden has been getting some attention though, with Megan's help, and I've been eating my homegrown strawberries almost every day. It's still too cool, and they are ripening slowly. 

Younger Son has arrived safely in Beijing, and now I find myself scanning the international news for natural disasters and other problems in China. I'm such a mother! He is thrilled to be there, but jet lagged. He was going to the Forbidden City yesterday, which would have been today on the calendar because of the date line. 

I'm feeling better than I probably have a right to feel. My appetite is coming back, and my energy is pretty reasonable. My only problem really is that I'm having trouble sleeping. I switched my sleep meds recently, and I don't think these are right. Not strong enough. 

I need to call Dr. Eulau today and set up the radiation to the right femur. As you may recall, I was resisting that and trying to put it off, but my therapist convinced me otherwise. I don't want a broken leg--and that could happen, apparently. 

So I will soon be back in the Gowned Waiting Room. Argh. 

More soon. My priority for today and the weekend is to finish all my end of life planning documents so that I can put that all aside for now. It's dragging on and on, and that's not good. Once that is all done, I'll be back to blogging. I still need to write about hospice and my appt. with the hospice social worker.

As I said, I'm way behind. 

More soon .... 

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

Apologies: Waaay Behind on E-mail

My apologies to everyone who feels that I have dropped the ball in the middle of an e-mail conversation. Yes, I have dropped the ball with a number of people, and I apologize. 

Realistically, it may take me until the end of the week to catch up--I hope not longer than that. But the good news is that I'm not behind because I'm sick (or sicker) or depressed or anything else like that, but because the weather has been great and I've had a lot to do. 

Saturday--a gorgeous day--I spent with an out-of-town visitor, Jana, a fellow cancer blogger from Southern California who knew my blog through Sara. Here is Jana's blog: Pilgrim Steps

Sunday I needed to rest up from being so busy on Saturday, but also I had a Russian dinner party to go to, and I very rarely go out at night so I knew I had to lay low during the day. It was worth it--the food was spectacular and so was the company.

Younger Son has also been needing some of my attention over the past few days--he's been moving out of campus housing (meaning his stuff is going mostly into our basement) in preparation for leaving for a two-week trip to China. 

This morning I helped out by driving him to campus to pick up the last car-load of his stuff. He leaves for China on Wednesday, and is writing a 10-page paper between now and then. In his usual chaotic style, of course, which makes me wonder how he is ever going to make it on that plane on Wednesday, but I know he will, somehow.

Tomorrow, I'm committed to taking the two of us to Chez for haircuts, and then to get Younger Son some clothes that he needs--new running shoes, shorts, and lots of new socks (you do not want to see the socks he is wearing, which were new at Christmas time, I believe). Also, Megan is coming tomorrow to help me with the garden and a few other chores, assuming she is over the bug that felled her last week. 

So things are hopping around here. My appetite seems to be returning (of course, I've been offered fantastic, tasty food), and I've even gotten some exercise. Going to try water aerobics again on Friday--Haven't done that for months. 

So all is well. 

@ Jeanne Sather 2010.