The Assertive Cancer Patient

Great 'My Turn' in Newsweek

The March 24, 2008 issue of Newsweek has a great "My Turn" piece about the power of the Web to help someone with cancer.

"My Turn" is written by Newsweek readers, and it's a feature I almost always read. (I've also pitched "My Turn" pieces unsuccessfully a couple of times over the years, but that's another post for another day.)

In "An Electronic Cure for Despair," Rich Thomas writes about the e-mails that raised his wife's spirits--and probably prolonged her life--when she was battling cancer, in the hospital, and in pain.

If you don't get the print edition of Newsweek, here's the link to the story online:

An Electronic Cure for Despair

I Need to Whine!

This doesn't qualify as a rant, I only rant about things that make me crazy, like the high cost of cancer drugs and the insanity of trying to sort out errors in my medical bills.

But I do need to whine, so here goes.

I've had a cold since Saturday, and I feel like crap. It's nothing serious, and it seems like half of Seattle is sick right now, so I certainly am not alone, but my throat hurts, my chest is full of gunk, and I'm running out of Kleenex.

I'm coughing, which hurts, and I have that exquisitely painful condition: Kleenex nostril--where the skin on my nose is red and tender from too much contact with tissues.

I didn't get up this morning till 10:30, which means I slept something like 13 or 14 hours. Obviously I needed it, because I was out cold. I've had to cancel things the past few days, including my volunteer stint at First Place, the school for homeless kids, and a coffee date with an old friend.

I hate having to do that.

To top it off, I'm behind on everything, so if you've been trying to contact me or I haven't done something I told you I would, that's the reason.

Oh, and I just turned down $500 from someone who wanted to put ads on my blog. That hurt, I was sorely tempted, but it didn't fit with my view of what I'm doing with this blog.

I'd really like to crawl back into bed, and I probably will do that in a couple of hours. Just baby myself for another day. Because I have an event tomorrow afternoon that I really don't want to miss: a get-together for freelance writers and editors sponsored by the Society of Professional Jouralists (SPJ) at REI downtown. I'm going with the writers in my small group writing workshop, and really looking forward to it.

The funny thing I've noticed about myself is that I don't whine (much) about my cancer like this--but a simple cold, now that's grounds for a whole lot of whining and bitching.

OK, I'm done.

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

Dirt Under the Fingernails

The first crocuses are blooming, which as far as I am concerned means spring is here.

Time to start cleaning up the garden beds. Time to mulch, to keep the weeds from coming on stronger than the plants. Time to choose seeds to start inside.

Yesterday, as part of my effort to baby myself, I went to the Fred Meyer gardening department and bought four bags of bark mulch and some potted bulbs--daffodils and tulips. One pot of tulips, the purple ones, is inside against the pumpkin walls of my dining room (Have I said that I love color?). The pink tulips are outside in a pot next to the daffodils by the front steps--a "welcome to my house" greeting, if you will.

Outside, the bulbs I've planted over the eight years or so since I bought this house are just starting to bloom: the crocuses, a few here and there, and a tiny purple iris that I planted last year. But most of the daffodils and tulips have just barely poked their heads above the soil. Time to get out and ruthlessly murder slugs and snails, before they eat the tops off of everything.

I'm an organic gardener, so I just cut slugs in half with whatever tool I have in my hand at the moment, and I step on snails. Awful, I know. I also surround attractive plants with coffee grounds, the slugs don't like those. Good thing I drink a lot of coffee!

I dumped two bags of bark in the backyard in the areas the dogs use. That keeps them from tracking in mud from bare dirt, and also keeps down the doggy smell.

The other two bags are going to go on my beds out front, but I'll leave that job for tomorrow. Time to take a sauna, shower, clean my nails, and walk Connie.

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

A Light Box to the Rescue!

It's been storming in Seattle for three days now--snow on Saturday, which was gorgeous: heavy wet flakes that swooped and swirled around my car as I drove home from my massage that afternoon.

Then heavy, heavy rain on Sunday--I didn't leave the house for the entire day. Didn't even get dressed, as a matter of fact. My friend Laurie came over to work on holiday projects with me, and I stayed in my flannel robe as I knit and ate soup and biscuits. (I kept the honey off the yarn, but it was a near thing.)

Today, the rain continues and it is dark, dark, dark.

Fortunately, the light box that I ordered a couple of weeks ago arrived on Saturday. Laurie, who is a massage therapist and uses a light box in the winter herself, helped me get it out of the box and set up.

HappyLight

That's what it's called, the "HappyLight." Actually, the "HappyLight Deluxe," although there is no "HappyLight Lite," or "HappyLight Regular," as far as I can tell. The name is painted on the plastic cover, along with this text: "Sunshine Supplement Light System."

I think it's pretty funny, which is a good thing, because there's no way I can get that writing off of there without damaging the light box.

So I've been sitting here with my light box shining on me for the past several hours, and I think it's working. I certainly feel more energetic than I would if I were just moping around here on this dark, rainy day without it.

I ordered my light box from a catalogue called Gaiam Living. It cost about $200, plus shipping.

This is what the catalogue says about the light box:

Bathe in the healing power of 10,000 lux glare-free Natural Spectrum light when you need the healing relief only sunlight can bring. The Deluxe Light Bath helps alleviate light-deficiency symptoms--whether from rainy days, seasonal change, jet lag or shift work. ...

Let's see if it's powerful enough to get me out the door to walk Connie in the pouring rain!

This is the first time I've ordered from this catalogue, which has some interesting things, and some that definitely belong on the "Quack" list.

For example, a bra with built-in bumps to massage the lymph glands under the arms.

Uh, huh.

The text doesn't say so, but you can't help but think that this is being sold as something that might help prevent breast cancer, by "...promot[ing] circulation and allow[ing] the tissues to relax in this area that contains 80% of the lymphatic glands that help process impurities."

I asked Laurie, who, as I said, is a massage therapist, about the "Brassage Bra" and she said, "NOPE, don't think so," so don't go out looking for this one.

I forgot to ask her if 80 percent of the lymph nodes are under the arms, because that sounds high to me. Don't forget, there are lymph glands in the groin, and in the chest, all over, really, so that number sounds wrong.

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.