How do you really tell your children that one of the most important people in their lives has cancer?
Wrapping your head around the fact that you or a loved one has cancer is no easy task. After my 46-year-old husband was diagnosed, we were in a state of shock and paralyzed with fear. Here are six things I wish we had known at the beginning of our cancer journey.
No one deliberately says something hurtful to someone diagnosed with a disease. But sometimes, it comes out, and it's hard to stop.
We're supposed to be in the prime of our lives; we're not supposed to get sick. But my cancer was misdiagnosed for over a year, and all the while my disease progressed inside of me. Doctors must be more aware that young people can, and do, get cancer.
If the logistics of preparing for chemo weren't enough, you also have to deal with other people. There's a strange indigenous dance people do... it's a frown-face-hug dance. Have you heard Gangnam style? Do those dances instead.
You will be different. You will never have the same sense of self. You should embrace this. Your old self was probably really great. Your transformed self will be even better. Give into what is happening and trust it.
After her experience nothing will be the same, since she managed to make out of an intimate tragedy a public polemic and even a funny story.
Though medical breakthroughs may be in the offing, the Big C still packs a psycho/spiritual wallop for the newly initiated. Here are 10 ways to beat back the cancer blues and be your own best friend.
If it takes a village to raise a child, you might say it also takes one to care for the sick. Cancer is at once personal and communal. And yet, caring for the sick can feel like writing a travelogue about a country you've never visited. You can't know where you haven't been.
The oncology world is overdue for an etiquette guide. There's no script for what to say to someone with a life-threatening illness, but if you can avoid saying these 10 things, you're off to a good start.
"Acute Myeloid Leukemia," my doctor said last May. I was 22 years old. My friends were busy starting their lives, and I was worried that mine might end before it had really begun.
The first time someone uttered the words, "You still have hope" in response to my cancer, I almost slapped them.
Cancer is a serious, life-threatening illness that kills more than half a million people every year in the U.S. alone. But you'd never know that if you get most of your information from newspapers and magazines.
