Cancer

I’m very pleased to feature a guest post from my friend, fellow advocate and founder of The IBC Network Foundation, Terry Arnold. Terry was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer in 2007. Even today, IBC is poorly understood and often misdiagnosed. If you are not familiar with IBC, you are not alone. In her post Terry …

The following is an excerpt from my memoir. I still often think about “that time” when my mother was dying from metastatic breast cancer. The memory is part of what drives me to continue advocating. Time is an elusive thing, and yet, time is everything.

Do you remember your very first loss? I don’t mean when you lost or misplaced something you cared about, I mean the first time you lost someone or something you truly loved. The first loss I recall is when our much loved black and brown dachshund named Penny died when I was ten years old. …

As I’ve mentioned before, February is a loaded month for me. It’s a month heavy-laden with dates and reminders. February was when cancer, the uninvited guest, first came calling and never “left the table”. February 2008 was when my mother’s metastasized cancer took an ugly turn for the worse and we reluctantly admitted her into …

I’ve probably mentioned once or twice (okay, more than that) that there will never be a day when I do not think about cancer due to a wide variety of reasons. Sometimes I can and do go for minutes, even hours without thinking about it. Even then, I am often rudely awakened and quickly brought …