The Assertive Cancer Patient

Late at Night ... Just Me and My Laptop (and a Sleeping Dog)

It's late at night, the house is quiet, and I'm busy posting new jewelry to my other blog, Charmed Bracelets. 

These are the pieces I made during that incredible decadron-fueled period of creativity a couple of weeks ago. 

I'm glad to be off the decadron, but I'm not complaining about all the work I got done!

Here's what's new:

The Love & Marriage Necklace(s)

I made myself just the choker of the pair above, and it's really pretty. I'm sure I'll wear it often. 

And Here's the Baby Carriage

A bracelet or necklace with this little charm, handmade in the 1940s, would be the perfect gift for a woman expecting her first baby, or her sixth, for that matter. 

More Ladybugs for Little Girls

These ladybug beads are really sweet. I even kept one for myself!

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

Flower-Power Jewelry

  I was only 14 in 1968, so too young to be part of the Counter Culture. 

Flower power. Love beads. Hippies wearing flowers in their hair, and sticking the stems of flowers into the barrels of guns belonging to cops and soldiers ... how I wanted to be a part of that!

My liking for jewelry designs incorporating simple flowers dates back to the 14-year-old me, but I'm also a gardener, and I believe in the power of flowers. 

I have several pieces of jewelry in my Flower Power series on Charmed Bracelets, and more are on the way. Here's the link:

Flower Power Jewelry

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

More Cancer and Work

 Another topic for discussion, related to Julie's topic, but from someone who is at the very beginning of her life with cancer. 

She's the breadwinner in her family and has a high-powered job as an attorney. She's also in the middle of 12 weeks of chemo and just recently had a double mastectomy.

She wants to hear from other people who are working during cancer treatment, or who have worked during treatment. 

Did you work full time or part time? Did you work from home, or go to the office? 

Did you schedule your treatments on a particular day of the week?  Did you take time off after each chemo treatment? 

And, perhaps most important: Did you have the support of your employer and coworkers? 

The OnHealth Nightmare

Many of you probably don't realize that I was fired while in cancer treatment, by the very health and fitness Web site that used my story--Jeanne's Diary--to bring national attention to the site.  

Here are the stories about that: 

Blindsided by disease and life, she fights to survive

Cancer survivor settles with OnHealth.com

Even though I won that battle, and received a settlement equal to almost a year's salary, no one who has been fired ever feels like they won. It was a nightmare. 

The bottom line on OnHealth: The company was teetering on the brink at the time they fired me, and it was sold to WebMD shortly thereafter. WebMD sucked up much of the content into its Web site, and closed down the OnHealth operation. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of folks!

Actually, I had some good friends at OnHealth, and several of them are still my friends. 

See also:

Open Forum: Who Wants to Talk About What?  

Cancer and Work

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

 

A Topic for Discussion: Cancer and Work

 I put out a call (see: Open Forum: Who Wants to Talk About What?) asking for readers to send in their topic ideas for discussion and I received immediate replies from a couple of friends.

The first was Julie, who is living with metastatic ovarian cancer. For more on Julie, see: Helping Julie: My Long Answer

She wrote: 

For a long time I've been able to work almost full time, look after grandkids, and live pretty much a normal life in spite of progressing disease and treatment. 

But recent treatments have left me pretty weakened and not able to live the kind of life I'm used to.  I'm finding it hard to find an identity outside of being someone with cancer. 

Jeanne and I have chatted about this and she's made some good suggestions, but I'm wondering how other people handle this?

Please leave your responses below in the comments box. Thanks. 

Here's one suggestion I have, volunteer. I get so much satisfaction from volunteering, and it's a way for me to pass on all that has been given to me. Believe me, homeless children need help much more than this cancer patient does!

See: First Place School

Here's my other volunteer effort, feral cat rescue: Kittens

I have been on Social Security Disability for several years now, and that allows me to work part-time and make up to $830/month net, meaning after business expenses are deducted, without losing my benefits. I don't make that much now, but I may as my jewelry sales continue to climb, and I make a little bit from writing as well, and from donations to my blog. 

I think my tax guy is going to tell me we have to count the donations as income, but I'm not sure. I'll find out, come tax time. 

Here's the entire category: Cancer and Work

@ Jeanne Sather 2010. 

My New Postcards

 The new postcards for my jewelry business landed on the front porch the other day, and I'm thrilled with how well they look. 

Monica, one of my closest friends, shot the photo. She shoots most of the photos for my jewelry blog and has  a wonderful talent for making my pieces look good. Laurie, another close friend, took the image and put the postcards together in Photoshop and ordered them from the printer. 

That's a task I could do, but it would stress my abilities a bit (I'd have to learn something new, which is hard sometimes when you don't have a lot of bandwidth), and it is so nice to have a competent friend take over the job. 

Now I have postcards to promote my jewelry in a low-key sort of way, which is all I'm comfortable with. I always include a few postcards when I mail a jewelry purchase. I leave them around town at restaurants and coffee places where I hang out. My friends have stacks of them as well. 

The previous batch of postcards featured a photo of a turquoise bracelet with a vintage sterling charm. It was a great image, but after that bracelet sold I wanted to use something else. 

I am determined to start a new fashion with my jewelry made with vintage bakelite buttons. Each piece is unique, each piece has the charm of an object that has been used and lived with for decades--what the Japanese call wabi sabi--and there is a quirkiness about taking such a mundane, everyday object, a button, and making jewelry with it. Or so I think. 

Go to: Charmed Bracelets: Bakelite

I have a cancer postcard too, a photo of a mosaic I made using pink ribbon M&Ms: M&Ms and Cancer: The Mosaic

Photo: Monica Strasen. 

@ Jeanne Sather 2010.

Playing With Buttons

I've been making charm bracelets--and then earrings and necklaces--for about a year now, and I really love it. 

Making jewelry brings in some money to supplement my meager income from Social Security Disability, and it keeps my hands busy. Making jewelry uses a different, non-verbal, part of the brain than writing does, so it's almost like giving my intellectual self a vacation. 

It's also a great break from cancer to worry about color and design for a change. 

Recently, I've fallen in love with old buttons, especially bakelite, and I've started making jewelry with them. Bakelite is an early plastic that was used in the Art Deco period for jewelry, buttons, and household items. It comes in gorgeous colors.

I just put a new bracelet on my jewelry site, Charmed Bracelets. This one is a sampler of bakelite colors and designs. See: Yummy Bakelite Buttons

There are a couple more bakelite button bracelets for sale on my site as well:

Bakelite Bracelet in Fall Colors

Happy Bakelite Bracelet

Here's another button bracelet, this one made with vintage mother-of-pearl buttons. It's one of my personal favorites:

White on White

@ Jeanne Sather 2009. 

 

More About Wellsphere

After I put up my post about Dr. Geoff of Wellsphere e-mailing to ask if the site could use the entire contents of my blog, FOR FREE, comments and e-mails flowed in from other bloggers who had been approached by the good doctor with the same request.

Here's yet another:

Dear Jeanne: ... I found you after I too got the letter from Wellsphere wanting access to my Web site. I was almost tempted till I read your story.

Thanks so much and by the way your site is absolutely wonderful.I will certainly pass it along. Best wishes, Barbara

Other comments posted to my blog include a warning from a former employee that Wellsphere might rip off our blogs. "I would monitor it to make sure they don't take any of your content," he writes.

Has anyone ever read this Web site? I have to admit that I haven't (yet).

Read the rest of the comments:

Wellsphere: Use the Content of My Blog for Free? (I Don't Think So ...)

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

Wellsphere: Use the Content of My Blog for Free? (I Don't Think So ...)

I'm moving this post back to the top of my blog a couple of months after first posting it, because it continues to attrach comments from readers who have also been contacted by Wellsphere.

Every so often, I get an e-mail from someone who is starting up a new Web site and wants to use the content of my blog, for free.

I'm always pretty amazed by these folks--they want to use my blog, which I've spent countless hours writing, and not compensate me for it. This is my intellectual property, after all. It's how I make my living.

Their pitch usually includes something about how MY blog will benefit from the wider readership of THEIR Web site, but in fact, the reverse is probably true: Their Web site would benefit from having my content.

So I always say no, but, just for fun, I always tell them first that I'm willing to discuss it if they are willing to pay. I think a retainer of $3,000 a month is about right for the use of any and all content on my blog.

Here's the latest of these e-mails. Note the excessive praise in the first paragraph. That's always a tip-off that they want something for nothing.

Hi Jeanne,

I was searching for the best medical bloggers when I discovered your blog at http://assertivepatient.com/. I want to tell you I think your writing is fantastic -- I really liked your post on Life With Cancer, “Time to Come Clean”. My name is Dr. Geoff Rutledge, and I've taught and practiced Internal and Emergency Medicine for over 25 years at Harvard and Stanford medical schools. I'm also the Chief Medical Information Officer at Wellsphere (www.wellsphere.com), where we are building a network of the web’s leading health bloggers, and I think you would be a great addition.

Wellsphere is a fast growing, next-generation online platform that is revolutionizing the way people find and share health and healthy living information and services. Our platform connects millions of users with the valuable insights and knowledge from health leaders and knowledgeable writers like you.

We are now launching a new health community on Breast Cancer, and I would like to invite you to be a featured blogger for this community. By joining our network of hundreds of leading health and healthy living bloggers, you will be in great company, and will benefit from exposure to the expanded audience of the Wellsphere community. When you join, we also will feature you on our very popular WellBlog (http://www.wellsphere.com/blog.s), with a link back to your blog.

We will republish the postings you’ve already written for you (through your RSS feed), and feature them not only on the Breast Cancer community pages of the site, but also within a new dynamic magazine-like Wellsphere360 section, where we give users a comprehensive view of expert information, news, videos, local resources, and member postings on topics you write about. Your profile page on the site will give you special status as a featured blogger in the Breast Cancer community. If you are an active contributor, we also will feature you on our homepage at www.wellsphere.com.

By connecting to the Wellsphere platform, you will greatly expand the audience for your postings and attract additional readers to your blog. Also, your posts will link back to your blog, so you will benefit from Wellsphere's high ranking and large readership interested in your topic, which will give you more traffic, additional relevant audience, and a higher ranking for your blog.

If you would like to be a featured blogger in the Breast Cancer community, just send me an email to Dr.Rutledge@wellsphere.com. You can see a sample of a Wellsphere360 special section at http://www.wellsphere.com/Wellsphere360/diabetes-type-2.htm

Good health,

Geoff

Geoffrey W. Rutledge MD, PhD
Chief Medical Information Officer
Wellsphere, Inc.
http://www.wellsphere.com

Now, maybe for someone who is new to blogging, or to writing about cancer, this might be a good deal. And if that's you, feel free to contact the good doctor and tell him I sent you.

But it's not a good deal for me, and here was my reply:

Thanks. I'm really honored that you thought of me for this. Let me think about it for a few days and I will get back to you. I just got home from ASCO and I'm pretty exhausted.

Also, one issue, to start the ball rolling: I can't let you use my content for free, so you could start thinking about what you can afford to pay.

Thanks,

Jeanne

And Dr. Geoff's reply:

Jeanne,

You're welcome. We do provide distribution and access to a larger audience for a select few blogs on each health topic. We also include links on each of your posts back to your own site, and we feature good posts and active bloggers prominently on our homepage -- but we don't pay for the postings to our site.

We would be pleased to include you in our Wellsphere health bloggers network.

Cheers,

Geoff
--
Geoffrey W. Rutledge MD, PhD

And that, as they say, is that. Do you think Dr. Geoff is working for free? Highly unlikely.

I had a similar exchange with Dr. Lee, the oncologist from South Korea who I met at ASCO. He seemed to think that I would be flattered to have him translate my blog into Korean for the benefit of the patients at his new private cancer hospital.

He was surprised, and I think offended, that I asked to be paid if he used any of my content.

Now I'm going to have to monitor his Web site (in Korean!) to see if he is ripping off my intellectual property. Argh.

But I know my writing has value, and I refuse to give it away to enrich someone else. I DID have another conversation today with an editor who I've been working with, and it looks like one of the larger health Web sites wants my work--and will pay for it. So I think that proves my point.

More details on that once we have talked again and come to an agreement.

An update on this one: HealthCentral is the Web site, and they are paying their bloggers as little as $50 per post--I could probably get them to pay me more than that, but I wasn't much impressed by the editor I talked with, or by the Web site. So I won't be working for them.

More About Wellsphere

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

Weird Cancer News

Used to be, politicians tried to hide their health problems. Remember JFK's rocking chair? And what presidential candidate had been treated for depression? And cried in public, clearly making him unsuitable to be the guy with his finger on the button?

(A digression--where are those nukes aimed, now that we no longer have the Soviets?)

And ordinary folks still try to keep their cancer histories quiet in the workplace, for fear that it will cost them raises and promotions, or even their jobs.

Then, we have this story from The Guardian about a local politician who lied about having testicular cancer. To be fair, he didn't lie about it to his constituency. Rather, it sounds like he was caught in a lie that he made up earlier when he resigned from a job where he was facing a disciplinary hearing.

The politician, Darren Gilbert, 22, has resigned.

Read the story: New Tory councillor resigns over allegations he lied about cancer

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

Writing About Cancer

Writing—whether done privately in a journal or publicly in a blog for the whole world to read—can be a powerful form of therapy. Writing can help you cope with the realities of living with cancer.

Writing is also a way to leave a legacy, something that is often important to people who have cancer.

I have been a writer, editor, and teacher for more than 20 years. For the past eight years, since I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, the focus of my work has been on writing about cancer. For me, this writing is a way to make a living, a way to help other people (my very personal legacy), and an intense kind of therapy.

It all started, eight years ago, with a piece about fear:

"How many ways can you say scared? Terrified, apprehensive, afraid, nervous, freaked out--just plain scared.

"For the two months since my breast cancer diagnosis, I've been riding an emotional roller coaster over the prospect of undergoing chemotherapy. Chemotherapy. You know, the treatment where they pump you full of poisons to kill cancer cells and your hair falls out and you vomit for days at a time and the cure is nearly as deadly as the disease. That treatment."

Those two paragraphs began Chapter 1 of Jeanne's Diary. I am proud of the diary, in part because it was where I finally found my voice as a writer (this after more than 10 years as a journalist).

My cancer-related writing, most of which is now gathered in this blog, includes:

•Jeanne’s Diary, which was first published on the OnHealth Web site in 1998 and 1999.
•Running With Fear, a cover story for Seattle Weekly that won a first place award from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2004.
•“The Best Summer of My Life,” a screenplay I am working on now.
•And a book, also called “The Assertive Cancer Patient,” that I am writing now.

It is through writing about cancer that I have been able to live with cancer.

The writing gives me a way to make sense of what is happening to me (especially when it all feels so out of control), and a way to vent when things are most intense. Otherwise, I'd probably be out smashing plates on the bridge, or jumping OFF the bridge.

Writing keeps me sane. And calm, mostly.

I love my blog, The Assertive Cancer Patient, and it takes up most of my time right now, but I also teach writing at the University of Washington Extension, in small workshops, and in a special free workshop that is only open to people living with metastatic cancer.

See the links below for more.

Blogs I Like

Making a Living

Write About It: A Workshop for People Living With Metastatic Cancer

Writing Your Own Obituary

Writing as Therapy Resources

@ Jeanne Sather 2006