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Breast Cancer Treatment, Cancer Language, Chemotherapy, Health, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Health Statistics, Language of Cancer, Mastectomy, Radiation, World Health Organization
prescribing health
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health is . . . a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Living as opposed to surviving. Wholly well rather than declared NED (No Evidence of Disease), the state commonly used to describe a patient’s status after treatment. Breast cancer surgeon, Dr. Deanna Attai, explains that, “we can never truly say a patient is cured of cancer – the best we can do is say that we find no evidence of it … NED is not perfect (very few things in life are), but still a good place to be.” Day 5 of the Health Activist…
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Blogging, Breast Cancer Awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Treatment, Culture of breast cancer, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Memoir, Memoir, Pink Ribbons, Themes of Childhood
the “human” resource ~ star stuff
The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff. Remembering the first time I saw it, nebulous and bright white on a screen in my doctor’s darkened office, the cancer makes me think of Carl Sagan’s “star stuff.” It requires magical thinking to accept the notion that human beings are descendants of a supernova that exploded long before we were born, that there is ancient star dust in each of us. None of this occurred to me in the moments or months following the…
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Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Language matters, Language of Cancer, Themes of Childhood, Van Morrison, Writing
“between cars on a passenger train”
Not quite a “Wordless Wednesday” . . . If I close my eyes to remember, I can just make out the shadow of my former self standing up and walking out the door, mortally offended by the kindly Breast Cancer Navigator who had just told me I had cancer. Like an unexpected snow, the pronouncement fell from her lips, rendering me wordless. Language betrayed me. But not for long. Within cancer, dance words and phrases that tend to sanitize and glamorize suffering and pain, to hide the horror and heartbreak visited upon ordinary people going about their daily lives. Old words take on new meanings – “staging” is no longer…
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the five people you meet in cancer country . . .
tongue-in-cheek (adjective) ~ characterized by insincerity, irony, or whimsical exaggeration I will be fifty years old next week. I can barely believe it. How did I get here so quickly? Cliched, I know, but it was just yesterday that I was sitting in school, waiting for something awesome to happen. Dressed in my uniform with “Tolerance and Development” embroidered in yellow Latin on the breast pocket of my French blue blazer, I was bored with the weather and school, the prospects in Northern Ireland, bored with my parents and teachers, all telling me that what they were telling me was for my own good. As all good teenagers do, I rolled my…
