Breast Cancer: Facts and Myths
My two most daunting tasks, when I moved to the States 18 years ago, were to find a new doctor and a new hairdresser, in that order. Coming face to face with a medical system I was wholly unfamiliar...
View ArticleOur medical choices – lessons learnt from Angelina Jolie
Few things irk me more than the dissemination of useless or misleading information, especially of the medical variety. I love nothing more than to question my omniscient i-Pad on matters from cooking...
View ArticleNarcissista.me on deciding the impossible – double mastectomy. And why she...
We were floored by the criticism levelled at Angelina Jolie for her decision to have an elective double mastectomy. The most vile of all …. that she did it for the publicity value. This post by our...
View ArticleWhy pomegranate reminds me of rock’n’roll and the perfect Christmas Cocktail
While I was at the neighbourhood goods market this weekend with the Nans, buying chicken pies for supper, I also picked up a bottle of pure pomegranate juice. The first place I ever tasted it was in...
View ArticleA short post on short hair and winning.
I’ve just had my hair cut and coloured in preparation for Christmas. Loving how I say that – I do it every month or so, but right now everything feels like festive. I’m keeping my hair really short,...
View ArticleWhat you do when your friend tells you she has cancer.
So here’s the thing about discovering that your friend has cancer – you feel infuriated. Not at her – because god knows this particular friend has always looked after herself…
View ArticleTrapped in a Kafka story.
For all my faults, I turned out to be one of those people who constantly strives to find the good in others, who tries to imagine how it would be…
View ArticleThis Thanksgiving I am thankful for a lumpectomy
Day 0 starts with a lot of nervousness but goes off with military precision. I leave the house at 5:30 am armed with newspaper, Gary Shteyngart’s autobiography (because the man…
View ArticleThe naked truth
The road is so winding and narrow, that music is out of the question. I have taken up running, in a surprise move (I haven’t gone for a run in…
View ArticlePlaying the cancer odds
On Thursday morning, halfway through my volunteering shift, on a whim, I crossed the street outside the hospital and walked into my oncologist’s office, to pick a copy of my…
View ArticleDown the rabbit hole of incidental findings
It starts innocuously enough. “Can you come in on Friday for a CAT scan? We need it to map your radiation.” And off I go, to don one more pale…
View ArticleClosing the loop on cancer – reflections
What I didn’t confess to anyone, and for good reasons, is that, while undergoing treatment for breast cancer, I obsessively read books on death. Not because I thought my demise…
View ArticleMarching uphill, 20 years from now
In the last five days I achieved my goal of doing as little as possible. Sort of. I came to a lovely resort outside Tucson, Arizona, to see the desert…
View ArticleIs there such a thing as eating too healthily?
As a lover of all things old and odd that can be found on Netflix, last night I started watching a 1976 mini-series based on the Irwin Shaw’s book, Rich…
View ArticleUp close and personal
On a resplendent Saturday afternoon, driving along the coast in Orange County, a commercial came on the radio for a famed Los Angeles hospital and its cutting edge breast cancer…
View ArticleHotter than July
I slide under the covers at ten. At midnight I open my eyes, look at the clock, uncover myself for thirty seconds – the time it takes for the hot…
View ArticleSelfish for a day
This birthday is strangely welcome. This birthday, I feel particularly selfish and in a celebratory mood. This birthday, my mind is filled with plans that stretch from today to next…
View ArticleBreast cancer and sexuality (and the best bras)
Curiosity kills the cat. Often, but not always. It can also come in handy. On Thursdays, during my hospital shift in Oncology, sometimes I swing by the resource library to…
View ArticleTraining the monkey mind
The woman with the crisp white coat who showed me into the darkened ultra-sound room was familiar. In fact, I remembered her well, because her name is Claudia, and sheRead moreTraining the monkey mind
View ArticleStrength in numbers
It’s been only recently, exactly a year after I finished radiation therapy, that I have been able to touch my right breast as if nothing had happened, as if nothingRead moreStrength in numbers
View Article
