Ever since my breast cancer experience in 1996, when I started spending lots of time with medical professionals, I have become fascinated by how doctors think about their profession and their patients. There is such a wide variation, I have found, in bedside manner and people skills, from compassionate to arrogant. Thus, any magazine... Read more
One of the side effects of living through breast cancer, I have found, is that your doctors often tend to regard some of the side effects of your treatment, ranging from weight gain to chemo brain, as trivial. Their attitude often may be summed up as, “you’re lucky to be alive, so stop complaining about being fat, or having a bad... Read more
What I looked like during chemotherapy?I have no photos of that time, and for good reason. I looked scary and felt terrible. I hid in my house most of the time. My skin was pale green. I was thin, though, after losing 25 pounds from being terrified, nauseous and not eating. But thin in the way concentration camp people were thin.View... Read more
Abortion, Miscarriage and Breast Cancer Risk. Call me fatalistic, but I have never believed that getting breast cancer was my fault. As far as I know, I didn’t get breast cancer because I didn’t exercise enough, or breast-feed my children longer than six months each, or because I got pregnant for the first time at the advanced age of 33.... Read more
I recently discovered a series of columns, written by Lauren Terrazzano of Newsday, called “Life, with Cancer." (www.newsday.com). The writer’s story is sad, but her columns are noteworthy. Terrazano, now 39, was diagnosed with lung cancer two years ago. Only a few days after her wedding last year, her lung cancer recurred. A... Read more