Discussing Breast Cancer

“Every step I take brings me closer to the realization of my dreams.”

This is a passage out of a new self-help type book by motivational speaker Judi Moreo (on the right), called You Are More Than Enough Achievement Journal. I believe journaling is a smart, healthy way to process your healing journey. It’s a way to express your thoughts and feelings and hopes and wishes and prayers and fears … without having to voice them to the world. It’s almost as important as prayer in the life of a survivor … but heck, who am I to preach about the benefits of journaling! Instead, allow me to introduce you to author Judi Moreo herself in this guest post she wrote for me to share:

Life is happening so fast, there’s no time for stillness or reflection. Many of us have forgotten how to listen to the still, small voice inside of us. Writing in a journal is taking time for yourself. You are giving yourself permission to express your feelings and access your intuition. Writing a journal is a discipline…the discipline of taking care of your inner self. Discipline is the key to all success!

Journaling is how we keep track of the steps.

Thank you Judi … wasn’t that great? (Here’s another link to Judi’s site, this one specifically to her blog — there’s great reading material there!)

When I first read the excerpt that I started this post with, “Every step I take brings me closer to the realization of my dreams,” I thought … what are my dreams … how has being a survivor changed them … what steps do I need to take to get closer to them …

I realize now that my dreams are much simpler than they used to be. I don’t need to travel the world, I want to experience new places with my family wherever we all wind up. I don’t need a grand house on a hill, I want a home where we can all live happily together. I don’t need fame and fortune, I want to be truly known by the people I’m blessed to have in my life.

The first step for me has been to spend more time with people, talking, traveling, playing … living life, together.

Now it’s your turn … what are your dreams? Have they changed? What steps are you taking to realize them? Are you journaling?

cancer, breast cancer, journaling, prayer, Judi Moreo, motivation, healing, health, wellness, health and wellness, survivor, dreams

Before we wrap up for the year I wanted to share one more book review with you. This book is one you should have in the house, on your shelves, as a reference manual — early in 2008 take a look at a Everyone’s Guide to Cancer Survivorship: A Road Map for Better Health by Patricia Fobair (social worker at Stanford University Hospital), Holly Gautier, RN (Cancer Concierge Services Director at Stanford Cancer Center), Ernest H. Rosenbaum, MD (a top oncologist and clinical professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco) and David Spiegel, MD (associate chair, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford School of Medicine).

This 304 page paperback was written for both survivors and health care professionals — so you’ll read lots of information explaining how and why health care professionals should treat cancer patients. But there’s lots in it for survivors and you don’t need to read it cover to cover. It’s divided into parts:

Part I: A Physician Guidance Program — including the elements of a post-therapy survival plan. Man, I wish I’d had one of these. Kudos to these professionals and those that heed their advice. “The goal is to promote wellness through health promotion and disease prevention.”

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This wasn’t a breast cancer book club selection but it is a seasonal story that I recently read that I want to share with you all. It’s one for the children. As you may know, I have three little munchkins who are about to celebrate a Christmas that hasn’t been tainted by cancer for the first time in four years. This year, my kids aren’t worrying that their mommy is sick, recovering from surgery, fatigued from radiation therapy … this year my kids are joyful and hopeful and I am so, so blessed.

Next year might be different — as cancer survivors (or women with a family history of breast cancer) we always think that, don’t we? Next year might be different.

All the more reason to hold onto this year and focus on what matters. For me that’s family, faith and giving.

In October 2007 I was blessed to receive a book that encompasses all of those for me: The Legend of St. Nicholas: A Story of Christmas Giving. It’s written by Dandi Daley Mackall and illustrated by Guy Porfirio.

For anyone looking to connect Santa Claus with the birth of Christ and the spirit of giving … here’s your solution. The book’s central character is a modern day boy named Nick. Nick it out shopping with his Dad, wishing he could buy a new CD with his money rather than gifts for his brothers. Then he overhears a ’store Santa’ telling the story of St. Nicholas — a wealthy young boy who used his fortune to buy gifts for others and found tremendous pleasure in doing so.

“Overcome with joy, Nicholas understood his mission in life. This is how he would celebrate Christmas from now on.”

That one line helped me to explain to my children why St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus, was, by the grace of God, allowed to live forever serving the Lord.

It’s a priceless addition to my holiday library. Great if you are parenting with religion — here’s a link to a blog dedicated to just that. And, here’s the Amazon.com link for The Legend of St. Nicholas if you want to order it online!

Remember when I suggested we read “Nordie’s at Noon”? Yes, that was September 17th. I’m averaging two months to read a book. How pathetic is that? I remember the day when I could/would read a book in one sitting even if it meant staying up to the wee hours. But now that I hit the pillow exhausted, there’s no more staying up until 2:00 or 3:00 am to gobble up every last page before turning in.

I know one of my loyal readers, Sherry, did just that when she dug into “Nordie’s at Noon”; God bless her, I imagine she no longer has kids living under her roof! Make sure you read her review when you’re done reading mine!

So “Nordie’s at Noon” … the personal stories of four women “too young” for breast cancer. (2006; Da Capo Press; Cambridge, MA; $20 USD).

Whenever I meet a breast cancer survivor, I instantly revel in our commonalities and feel a strong bond connecting us that is intangible but very, very real. It was no different when this book introduced me to the four authors: Patti, Kim, Jennifer and Jana. Even the preface included thoughts on one such commonality. They were of course talking about the bond between the four of them, but for me as a reader, it was a bond between myself and them: “our common bond was ever present: a sense that life is a precious gift and that maybe our affliction was a blessing in disguise because it made us appreciate life all the more” (pg. xvii).

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Yes, I’m confirming the next book on our breast cancer book club reading list: “Nordie’s at Noon: The personal stories of four women too young for breast cancer.” (Thanks for the push, Sherry. I was so busy I overlooked the fact that another month was slipping by!)

These four women were all at different life stages when diagnosed with breast cancer. Patti was a 24, single corporate girl. Jana was a 27 year old about to get married. Jennifer, also 27, was five months pregnant. And Kim, at 30, was about to celebrate her son’s second birthday party.

People Magazine gave this book a 4-star review (10/9/06) and had this to say about it: ” …this is a rare book that has the saddest of endings and yet still manages to be–yes–life affirming.”

Let’s read this one asap. I’ll post my review at the end of the month; you can email me yours and I’ll make it an official post or you can add your comments/review as a comment to my review.

If you want, let me know what you want to read next in a comment or an email. Also, if it helps, here’s a link to the book on Amazon:

Not sure how (or why) this book club works? Here’s a link to my first explanatory post here on this site. Check out the other books we’ve read together on this site (look at the category, ‘breast cancer book club’ — there have been a bunch. I look forward to reading with you!

I just read Sherry’s commentary on my review of The Department of Lost & Found — here’s a quote from her comment:

“I said recently to someone that I want to decorate the world. Color is important, being bold, living life full, in my face, loud and noticeable. I don’t think it’s for everyone else. I know it is for “me”. I want to remind myself every day that I am here, that I am alive and vibrant.”

I had to laugh … I so clearly remember the day I brought home a green tiki umbrella for the patio table on our deck. I mean heck, if that wasn’t a bold post-cancer move on my part, I don’t know what was! To this day I love my umbrella. It has faded quite a bit, but each time I sit under it, I just smile and feel me.

Now it’s your turn. What have you done post-Cancer that is alive and vibrant? And Sherry … I want specifics about how you’ve colored the world!

Elizabeth Prostic (Lizzie) was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer in October 2004. She was just 31 years old and a first time mom to a three-month-old baby at the time. She was one of Allison Winn Scotch’s closest friends.

Six months after her diagnosis, Lizzie passed away. Allison still grieves, still mourns … and yes, Lizzie was her inspiration as she started writing The Department of Lost & Found. But all those who’ve battled breast cancer inspire her, not just her friend.

Here’s something Allison said about survivors in a recent interview: “I’ve always walked away with the impression that these women are incredible and that their courage is unmatchable.”

Interestingly, Allison’s fictional character, Natalie, barely resembles Allison’s friend, Lizzie. However, Allison still viewed the book as an opportunity to rewrite her friend’s story: “Not her story in particular, but that of a woman who had so much left to live for. Only this time I could control the ending, rather than watch helplessly from the sidelines.”

Ah, to control the ending. Unfortunately, unless we’re talking about writing a story of our own, we just can’t do that now, can we? We don’t know the cards we’ll be dealt. We just have to make the best of the hand we get.

Allison herself said, “I really believe that life is what you do with it, something Natalie learns along her bumpy road as well. Losing Lizzie only heightened those feelings. The simple, and perhaps cliched, truth is that you only get one shot, and who knows when, how or why that might be stripped away from you.”

As I said yesterday when I reviewed The Department of Lost & Found, Lizzie would be proud of her friend, Allison.

She’d also be proud of her husband, Michael Lundblad, and her parents. Together, they established a foundation in her honor called The MetaCancer Foundation (www.metacancer.org) to provide inspiration and psychosocial support for patients and caregivers living with metastatic cancers.

It’s a great site. If you get a chance, check it out. Meanwhile, in case you don’t, tomorrow I’ll post about the red shoes.

Red shoes, you ask? Red shoes?

Ha, ha … you’ll have to wait and see!

I’m so glad to finally be writing this review because The Department of Lost & Found is the best book I’ve read in a long time. It’s Allison Winn Scotch’s debut novel and though it is a work of fiction, it reads like a memoir, the memoir of someone I wish I knew. No … someone I wish I had as a best girlfriend.

This book is beyond touching … it speaks to your soul. As a survivor, I connect to the fictional main character the way I connect to any member of the sisterhood.

The Department of Lost & Found is not pure chick lit and it’s not pure romance; this book has a little of both genres woven into it and I couldn’t put it down. It was an amazing dichotomy: I couldn’t wait to finish this book and when I finally did, I was sad that is was over because I enjoyed reading it so much. I wished it went on and on. Now, I crave a sequel. (Allison, can you get going on one, please?)

Here’s a synopsis: the book’s heroine, Natalie Miller, a 30-year-old single woman working as a senatorial aide, is loaded with ambition and gumption. Her world is rocked when she’s diagnosed with breast cancer. That’s where the story begins … read this excerpt from page 13:

“So you have to understand that in the span of less than a month, my (disloyal, scum-sucking) boyfriend of two years dumped me (”I can’t handle this” is how he put it, right before I threw a vase at his head, which, surprisingly enough, because he wasn’t much of an athlete, he actually manged to duck); my job, which previously had been my lifeblood, had been paired down to admittedly semidesperate emails; and my health, my mortality, something I’d never even given a flying fig of a thought to, was suddenly in total jeopardy. So it’s not hard to see why I was coming more than slightly undone.”

I mean, even though I have little in common with Nat, her story resonates with me, deeply. That’s the way that cancer thing is … time and time again, I notice, it gives us a shared experience.

A shared experience. I found myself thinking, that’s what bonds Natalie Miller and I together. Then I remember she isn’t human.

Back to the synopsis: After she’s diagnosed, Nat explores her previous “failed” relationships, the five great loves of her life. She considers starting a completely new relationship (with a good friend’s ex, man, that’s messy). She struggles to maintain her foothold at work while her responsibilities are being filled by someone not combating the effects of chemotherapy. She is forced to look at the professional choices she’s makes and why she makes them. She leans on her friends and angers her friends and leans on her friends some more. She’s so real.

This book is filled with many real moments — that’s why it reads like a true story.

Like the night before Nat’s mastectomy when she bids farewell to her breasts (here, I’ve spliced the paragraph, found on page 173, but the entire graf is among my favorites):

“I sat up in the soapy waters of my tub and held them both, my breasts. I wanted to mourn them, to kiss them good-bye and say that I’d miss them, but really I was too angry … These things, these symbols of my womanhood, these swollen mounds that were supposed to feed my children and display my ripeness to the world had done just the opposite … as I looked down on them that night, covered in frothy bubbles and hot water, I despised both them and what they’d done to me.”

Like the way Nat tracked the passing of time with her chemotherapy cycles (page 205):

“That’s what it’s like to live with cancer — it’s hard to remove it from your life, even when you’re talking about something else entirely.”

Like when Nat shopped for a party dress after enduring her treatment and took a good look at herself in the mirror, thinking about the words of another survivor, Susanna (page 263):

“I stood naked in front of the mirror … and stared at my body, so foreign, so different from when I started … and remembered Susanna’s wise words: that my body was just a vessel. What it carried inside of it was what really mattered.”

In The Department of Lost & Found, Allison Winn Scotch aptly balances the seriousness of breast cancer with humor — really funny stuff, stuff that makes me smile just thinking back. Like Nat’s obsession with The Price is Right. Or her adventures with marijuana (for medical purposes of course). I mean, there’s some great comical elements in this book, which lightens the burden of the main character’s disease. And that lightens the burden of ours, doesn’t it?

So there you have it — my take on this brilliant novel. My strong opinion is that this is a must read for any woman, but especially the breast cancer survivor. Well done Allison Winn Scotch. Well done.

Tomorrow I’m going to share a little bit about Allison Winn Scotch’s friend Elizabeth … diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer in October 2004 as a 31 year old first-time mom to a three month old. Clearly the inspiration behind the book, Lizzie deserves the limelight; she passed away in 2005 but I feel in my heart that she would be so proud of her friend’s accomplishment.

If you’re interested, you can read other reader reviews of The Department of Lost & Found at Amazon.

Now it’s your turn … what did you think?

Remember this? I haven’t forgotten. It turned into the July/August Book Club Selection. I’ll review Allison Winn Scotch’s debut book tomorrow. Eventually I’ll choose a book for September (suggestions always welcome!).

Allison Winn Scotch is one of my favorite freelancers, full of insight and expertise for newcomers and always willing to share her invaluable advice.

Now she’s written a novel called “The Department of Lost and Found” and I can’t wait to read it! Why? Because her heroine, 30 year old Natalie Miller, is diagnosed with breast cancer. Before her diagnosis, she’s ruthless and ambitious, working as a top aide a female senator in New York and living with a less than sexy boyfriend. After her diagnosis? Well, we’ll just have to read to find out!

Cosmopolitan called it “Too good to pass up. You’ll laugh a lot (and cry just a little) as Natalie rebounds from the big C and reinvents her life.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer says it’s “A light, fast and fun read about a serious topic.”

Publishers Weekly called it “A bon bon of a book.”

I’ll aim to review this one near the end of July, beginning of August. I have to keep the date somewhat loose because my summer is unpredictably busy!

Next book on the list? You tell me. Leave a comment with the name of the books you want to read as a group and I’ll get them on my list.

(If you are an author or a publisher or a PR rep … review copies accepted; email me for my address.)

“Cancer, I am going to kick your butt … “

That’s what Marisa (in character form) is saying to the cloaked cancer villain on the inside hardcover of her graphic memoir.

Marisa created a work of brilliance when she cartooned her way through breast cancer. She visually depicts the shared experiences of survivors, down to the most minute details. Like including the time she received the call re: her diagnosis (10:12 am) and the time she called her parents to share the news with them (10:12:03 am). Like the one post-diagnosis phone call (from her sister) that caused her to finally break down and cry. Like the number of needles she was poked with throughout her experience (29). Oh, and like the number of pounds she gained throughout the ordeal (18).

Marisa’s experiences are so poignantly told in her visual story that I sat down and read this book in one sitting. I related to so much of what she shared in “Cancer Vixen” — reinforcing the idea that survivors are united in an experience that surpasses differences in status, style and sociality. That says a lot since I’m a Connecticut wife of ten years and mother of three kids and Marisa is a single child-less Manhattan cartoonist, published by The New York Times and The New Yorker, engaged to a ‘It’ Italian restaurateur. (I’ll let you read about whether or not she stays single for the duration of the book.)

The words we choose to describe what we are going through aren’t always sufficient to describe our experience. Even as a writer, I find myself struggling to convey my thoughts and feelings at the time of my diagnoses and during my treatments. (I think that’s why it is such a relief when you talk with a survivor because they can just say, ‘I know,’ and they mean it because they’ve been there.)

When Marisa depicts herself as a young girl climbing up onto her mommy’s lap and saying, “I don’t want to be here,” … well, I’ve never had a cartoon bring tears to my eyes before, let me tell you, and I never imagined feeling such emotion in this genre.

My favorite topic? The Cancer Card (page 107 if you have the book). We’ve all been given it and we’ve all used it. It’s our consolation prize. Heck, just last night, a friend of mine swiped my card and I didn’t even know she had one with her name on it. LOVE how Marisa handled that one.

Two great two page layouts:

(1) In the beginning of the book, Marisa takes us back to the other life-changing event dominating her life as an American and a Manhattanitte (9/11). She included her ‘talking pictures’ from that day in 2001; I’m so glad she did.

(2) Towards the end of the book, Marisa takes us into the radiation clinic where she succinctly captured the reason radiation is ‘psychologically harder than chemo’ (her words, not mine). I love her succinct summary of what took place over several weeks.

Finally, and this might be the main reason I smiled as I turned page after page: Marisa wasn’t afraid to reference Catholicism in the book. Praying to God and praising Mary and the intercession of Saints Philomena and Blessed Iacobus — lighting candles in the church, saying the rosary. Those familiarities speak to me personally as a Catholic. But Marisa also visited The Kaballah Centre. So, without saying it, she communicates to us that survivors need all the help we can get from God and the saints and any practice of our faith that helps us to feel the strength He offers us is a good thing.

I highly recommend this book. Powerful. Light. Funny. I’m going to leave this one on my coffee table for a long, long time. Probably opened to the page with a single candle with a glowing flame and the line, ‘When you light a candle, you illuminate a soul.’ A moment of silence for those who lost the battle against cancer and no longer live in our world.

Read more reader reviews on the Amazon web page.

Toya, at The Life of a Ladybug! Her comment was randomly selected to receive a copy of the book. I’m so psyched for her.

Toya participated in The Beauty Network’s original Comment for a Cure event and gave $100 to theSisters Network, a national African-American Breast Cancer Survivorship Organization. LOVE IT!

Thank you so much, Toya … your support of survivors is outstanding. I appreciate your visit to Discussing Breast Cancer and commenting over here for the cause as well.

I added up the dollar amount for my ‘comments for the cure’ contest (the idea I borrowed from The Beauty Blog Network). Over the course of two days, this blog saw 23 comments. That means I owe the American Cancer Society $23.

And … Elke, Catslyn, Mark Jabo and Tim Lynch (my dear husband) all said they’d match whatever dollar amount we came up with.

You guys can donate online here.

Can you believe it? This blog, in two days, raised $115 for the ACS. Great job, everyone. It is such a symbolic gesture for survivors everywhere. Thank you.

Seriously … thank you … from the bottom of my heart.

Of course, only five people voted … and one of them was me … but a vote is a vote and I have to call it done so we have time to read.

Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto is a graphic memoir. Love that concept!

Apparently it “is as bold, vibrant, and brave as she is–pumped full of color, the story leaps off the page and into your heart. Poignant and funny, this inspiring story is made all the more powerful by Marchetto’s cartoons.”

Seems like a great beach read. I’m totally psyched and will head down to Borders tomorrow. If you want to buy it online, I’ve included the Amazon link below.

So … planning ahead for next month … what titles do you want me to include on the list for July’s book club selection?

I have to make a choice! Are you a lurker who wants to read a good breast cancer book? Cast your vote now. I’ll announce the choice tomorrow so we have a few weeks to read the selected book.