Health | Mesothelioma | Cancer

I’m feeling very grateful tonight. Grateful that I am part of the cancer community. I am grateful for those of you I’ve met and corresponded with and talked to on the phone. Those I’ve met in person in my community. Just since publishing my web site I’ve communicated with over 220 appendiceal cancer patients. I [...]

I’m going to take a bit of a chance here, to say some things that might not be understood or appreciated by some. But I want to be very honest, I want to say some things that from my perspective I don’t hear verbalized much by those within and outside of the cancer community. I [...]

In my post of October 10th, I said I was going to talk about my latest advocacy venture. Here goes! After publishing my web site, I became involved with many diagnosed with appendix cancer who emailed me after discovering my site. I’ve also communicated with those who have abdominal cancers of origins besides appendiceal cancer [...]

I’ve been a part of the community of cancer patients for 8 years now. I’ve communicated with hundreds of cancer patients via my web site, cancer survivor events, conferences, walks. I’ve noticed common themes arise in the cancer community. Things I thought were unique to my experience are not.

I communicate with many cancer patients now as a result of having been in the cancer world for several years. I so appreciated the wisdom that fellow patients have articulated and sent my way this week.

I think the greatest thing about Stand Up To Cancer, besides the money it raised for research, was that it helped us all to be aware of the need to support cancer research funding. I think the public response to Stand Up To Cancer (countless celebrities were involved and at least 10 million viewers participated) [...]

I have always been in love with words. I’m a word junkie. And lately I have a new favorite word: Collaboration. I’ve had to learn to spell it…I still want to put and “e” where the second “o” goes.

I’m struggling a bit with this series of posts….I want to be positive and hopeful that everyone will fight and survive and beat their cancer odds. I want us all to be survivors and to live long and healthy and productive lives. I want us all to be poster children for cancer survival.

I read something recently that struck home and made me think. It compared cancer patient relationships to those of survivors of natural disasters or other community tragedies. In my experience, those are sometimes situations that bring out the best in humanity, the best in human nature. I was thinking about a terrible snow storm in [...]