The Assertive Cancer Patient

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

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

The Assertive Cancer Patient: Knows About Workplace Rights

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I had no idea that people who were in cancer treatment could, or did, work. I was surprised when my doctors told me that I could continue to work with a few weeks off after surgery and a few days off after each chemotherapy treatment.

You may want to continue to work, or you may have no choice in the matter, as I didn’t, since I am a single parent raising two sons. But there are obstacles—including employers. I was fired while in cancer treatment by the health and fitness Web site for which I first wrote about my cancer in a weekly series called “Jeanne’s Diary.”

I also did not know, until I was fired, that people with cancer are protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act. The act provides protections for both cancer patients and cancer survivors. These protections include "reasonable accommodation," such as working from home, to allow you to continue to work if you want to.