Since my mom needed reading glasses–cheaters–in her 40s and I had always followed after her, I expected to need glasses at some point in my 40s–and I was right. On the other hand, breast cancer showing up 5 years ago today on December 1st, was not expected. Today I officially hit the 5 year mark of […]
Category Archives: Health
Since October 2011–when I went to my gynecologist for a long overdue physical check-up, which led to a baseline mammogram at 43 that identified suspicious growths in my right breast, which also happened to be malignant–I have been averaging at least one doctor’s appointment or procedure a month. Even though my ‘active’ breast cancer treatment was […]
Last month, my Aunt Anna passed. After being in remission for over 10 years, her breast cancer had returned and metastasized, unknown to anyone until Thanksgiving. It came as a shock, since everything seemed to be going well–and she was starting to make plans to celebrate her 90th birthday in May. She was one of my […]
I wrote this post this last week on an evening I was feeling really low. I’m feeling better now and was leaning towards not posting it. However, a number of blog and Facebook posts this past week reminded me that the ‘Holidays’ are stressful for a lot of people and that I am not alone in my […]
A number of bloggers that I follow have taken Nancy’s suggestion to write a post of 15 random facts about themselves. Well, I’m jumping into the mix, but rather than just a general post of details from various parts of my life, I’m going to use this spark to jumpstart an update post. It’s been awhile. Here goes: 1. […]
In the past, to me, the most amazing sunrises in Chicago were viewed from high-rise apartments that look out over Lake Michigan, while the most spectacular sunsets were seen from the deck of a sailboat while coming into one of Chicago’s harbors after a Wednesday night beer can race. Since beginning to row this spring with the organization Recovery on Water […]
15 or so years ago, while I was recruiting for Peace Corps, I decided I wanted to start taking yoga classes (for meditation and flexibility) and kick boxing (for self defense and cardio). One of my co-workers at the time, Kelvin, suggested I try Aikido instead, where I could combine the meditation, flexibility, self-defense and cardio […]
I finally saw the movie ‘Gravity’ recently with Sandra Bollack and George Clooney. It’s been in our DVR que since October, but obviously other things took precedence. I was fascinated that a movie with what seemed like a limited scope and tiny cast could have so much action and found that it lingered in my […]
Before I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011, I didn’t realize how much time cancer truly sucks out of a person’s life. Moving back to Chicago hasn’t gone quite the way I had planned and it’s because of cancer, not just mine, but my sister’s and our dog Zoey’s. I didn’t plan on my […]
I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test at different points in my life, the version where my place of employment paid a company serious money to administer the test and coach us on our results. I took it in my early twenties while I was a resident advisor at Northern Michigan University and then again […]
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