Three-Day Weekend: Be Careful Out There!

Dear Friends,

I know that with the latest news about sunscreen and the confusing study results, it’s tough to know what to do about that bottle of sunscreen on the shelf.  I know I’ve been confused — use it? Don’t use it? Panic? Don’t panic?  Well, my friend Catherine Morgan has just written a piece over at BlogHer summarizing the issue and the responses to it, including one just for us bloggers from the American Cancer Society.  She lays it all out for us, and I encourage you to read Catherine’s piece.

As you make your plans for Memorial Day, won’t you please remember to Slip, Slap, Slop (Slip on a shirt, slap on a hat, slop on the sunscreen) and protect yourself and your children from the sun’s harsh rays, particularly when they’re at their peak?

If it’s still too much trouble or too awkward to throw on a shirt or a coverup at the beach this weekend, please read this piece by Julie Pippert to understand the importance of skin checks.

Prevention is so much easier than treatment.  Be careful out there.

Susan

They take my breath away

Do you remember the first time a book took your breath away?  The first time you disappeared between the covers of one of the Little House on the Prairie books, a Madeline L’Engle fantasy, or even Harriet the Spy, and you said YES, THIS.  This is what I’ve been trying to say.  These are my words and my soul.  These are my people.  This is where I fit in. These are the people that make me feel closer to all people.  These are the words (or images, or sounds) that feed my soul, and make me a better person. Ever feel that way?  And when the words come to an end, the last few pages disappear, and the notes crescendo, you are at once deeply satisfied and deeply disappointed that there is no more?

The amazing thing about this medium we call blogging is that there is always more.  There is (almost) always another post by that blogger-friend who writes your soul.  There is (almost) always another adventure by that blogger-friend who keeps you laughing, brings the tears, or invites you to say, YES, THIS.  And this is the amazing thing about blogging. And friends.

These are some of my amazing blogger-friends, amazing for the way they write, amazing for the way they teach, amazing for the way they live generously and without fear.  If you haven’t met them yet, I invite you to meet them today.  Go on.  They’re good people.

Amy, Teachmama, teaches us every day how to add a little learning and a lot of fun into ordinary days with our children.  Amy writes and teaches as a labor of love, even starting a network of other parent-teachers called We Teach that is absolutely amazing — and welcomes you.  Amy is a treasured resource in our community and a friend — and if you agree, would you please take a second to tell Scholastic’s Parent & Child magazine that she’s  incredible too?  Amy is one of the top three nominated for the 2010 Parent Blogger Awards in the “Books and Reading” category.  Everyone’s vote counts; you don’t have to be a blogger. Amy is brilliant and giving and kind — won’t you help me recognize her for this by clicking and telling Scholastic she’s a top blogger before June 4?

Sunday, from XtremeParenthood. When she heard about my recurrence, Sunday approached me and said that she’s thought about doing something to fight cancer for years (her dad is a survivor!) but this moved her off the couch and into action.  Sunday started a Relay for Life Team, Team WhyMommy, and she and Lara and I will be walking in Catonsville on June 12 (coincidentally, my wedding anniversary!).  Sunday is a mover and a shaker and, since the March Momzshare, a good friend.  Go visit her blog and, if you feel moved, donate a little something to  her Relay for Life Team, Team WhyMommy and/or vote for her blog as Nickelodeon parent’s pick!

Leticia, TechSavvyMama and Chief BitMom, knew about Sunday’s efforts and, while at a meeting with the makers of BitDefender last month, asked them for a donation to support her team and the American Cancer Society in the fight against cancer.  She must have been persuasive, because look what she scored — a THOUSAND DOLLAR CHECK to ACS for Sunday’s efforts in my honor.  WOW.  Thank you, Leticia!  If you’re interested in helping to secure your child’s online safety, go visit her at BitMoms — you can even sign up to join Leticia in this quest!

Jessica, A Parent in Silver Spring; Jennifer, Hip as I Wanna Be; and Lara from Chicken Nuggets of Wisdom organized this AMAZING fun event on Saturday night where dozens of D.C. mom bloggers got to spend a night out with each other, socializing, networking, making connections, and talking about our passions — what makes us dream bigger than the laundry that surrounds us every day — and as a bonus donated all proceeds to the American Cancer Society.  So many of us have been touched by cancer, they explained, and they wanted to do a little something to help.  Well, this was more than a little something.  Thanks to their efforts and the generosity of the mom bloggers that attended, munching on delicious gluten-free cupcakes from Treets and sweet potato soup catered by SouperGirl, while raffling off prizes from some amazing local businesses (I won a beautiful set of plates and goodies from local decorator @TuscanHome) the American Cancer Society is receiving a $1400 donation in the fight against cancer. A-mazing.  Jennifer is nominated for a blogging award too — if you loved MomzShare or the spirit of community, won’t you vote for Jennifer as a Nickelodeon parent’s pick and plan to attend the next MomzShare event?

Julie Pippert is a Texas mama I work with on the American Cancer Society Blogger Council and the Bloggers for More Birthdays.  Julie, Leticia, Amie, Amy, Morra, Catherine, Darryle, and the rest make talking about cancer a fun task.  In fact, we donned birthday hats at MomzShare to wish the American Cancer Society a HAPPY 97th BIRTHDAY and we’ve had fun with the More Birthdays and Choose You campaigns.  Julie, though, is easily one of the most committed to the cause.  Not only did she follow through with her Choose You pledge to get a suspicious blotch on her skin checked out, she went ahead and got cancer.  That’s right.  Julie was diagnosed with skin cancer last week, and she was brave enough to share it with the internet at the Choose You blog and Mothers With Cancer.  Go. Show her some love if you have a minute to spare today.

Some days I’m too tired to blog. Some days I’m too busy to blog.  But I know without a doubt that blogging brings amazing people into my life, and I am grateful for all of you, fellow bloggers and commenters alike.  These are just a few friends who are on my mind today — aren’t they incredible?  When you have a second, won’t you click through and vote for them or drop them a note of support?

At Momzshare Saturday night, life coach and brain cancer survivor Lauree Ostrofsky asked us to name our passion.  Aside from kids and family, she asked, what drives you?  TheMomBabe and I were surprised to find that our passions were very, very similar.  We had never met before, but we both work to encourage women to follow their passion (me in science, her in blogging) and to achieve success as each woman defines it for herself.  The women I introduced you to above are following their passions, encouraging others, and sharing themselves and their words even when it isn’t easy or comfortable.

These women inspire me, and make me eager to turn the page or click through and see what comes next.

A sweet night out with friends

My second course of radiation started this week.  Every morning, I start my day with a quick stop in the radiation center for treatment, take a deep breath, and go on about my day.  It’s not quite as easy as all that, of course, but that’s the way I’m going to look at it, for as long as I can.

After a week, the left side of my chest and my armpit are tender to the touch.  I have sharpie marker stains outlining the treatment field in dashed lines, and I have a few new tattoos too (just dots, but I like to think of them as stars that are very far away).  The thick dashed lines bothered me at first (really, one day, I had red stains, black stains, blue tattoos, and yellow paint marking the treatment areas.  When they brought out the green marker, I  couldn’t decide whether I was an old-fashioned diagram for cutting up beef, or a piece of art.)

If they bring out the barbecue sauce, I’m outta there!

I felt awkward. I felt more than awkward, really.  As the technicians pushed and pulled my body into position where the tattoos lined up exactly with the red beams (remember the security system in Ocean’s Twelve? Psych? Chuck? Dr. Who? White Collar? Ohgoodgrief, what tripe are you watching these days?  And when are they going to add a laser hallway protecting Sue Sylvester’s trophies on that other show we all watch, anyway?) — aw, heck, now I have other things to think about when they’re lining me up with the red “laser-like” beams.

Which is awesome.  It’s all about not getting bogged down in the cancer treatment these days.  Yes, cancer sucks, but I AM MORE THAN THAT.  My life is more than that.  And so, this week I was thrilled beyond belief to go out with my friends TWICE, to pitch new ideas back and forth across the table, to hug their necks and to ask about their kids, and to spend a day and a half working downtown with education and outreach professionals on NASA’s upcoming Year of the Solar System.  Really — does it get cooler than that?  (HEY! It’s cool, ok?)

Back to dinner.  The lovely Miss Jessica asked me to dinner at The Melting Pot in Gaithersburg on Tuesday, and we motored up to join our friends in the private dining room.  It was a good thing we had a room to ourselves, because if I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned that a room full of mombloggers can be ROWDY.  Oh, I kid.  We were perfectly well-behaved, if you don’t count a couple of extraneous squeals and overzealous hugs when a new friend or twelve walked in.

It was a wonderful night, gathering around the pots o’ cheese (I ate way too much fiesta cheese, but the Feng Shui melted cheese with white wine was awesomely delicious) with parenting expert and friend (lose the guilt!) Devra, Mother in Medicine KC, MamaLaw Justice Fergie (as seen in this month’s Southern Living!), and new friend (recently rediscovered?) Lindsay from RockandRollmama.  The brilliant TeachMama, techie TechSavvyMama, “it girl” Jessica, and I posed for a photo and hashed out a bit of our BlogHer ’10 session on resource blogging. We all tried the main course, cooking shrimp, beef, chicken, and veggie pasta, but we quickly agreed that if we were going to go out together?  We were much more interested in the cheese and chocolate.  Particularly since not a few of us had had to cook for our children before we left for our own dinner.  (Bygones.)

Between courses, I was thrilled to hug the neck of “Fried Apple Pies” Kristen; thoughtful Laurie Writes (who does, and who is available this summer if you need a writer); The Fabulous Miss S (who is, and I should visit her blog way more often!); Lara, who did not actually bring her Chicken Nuggets of Wisdom since dinner was being served, but who did tell me how she and Janine are starting to Bring it to Fruition; Jodifur, whose shoes I really should have noticed; neighbor and summerbuddy Stimey; and the sparkly Thien-Kim.

And then, the chocolate course.  I still have a gooey warm feeling about consuming strawberries and bananas dipped in cookies and cream dark chocolate while catching up with Janine/@Twincident and Urbanmama, although I could have easily been distracted by the brownies dipped in amaretto.  You know, since it was there and we mamas don’t like to waste  food and all.

Anyways.  This post is a shout-out to my blogging friends, who I had a lovely time with (if I didn’t mention you, please blame the chocolate), and something for me to remember:  If I lose a day (Hello, Wednesday) because I spent my spoons the night before, it’s totally worth it.

Disclosure: The Melting Pot D.C. hosted our band of mamas for dinner and dessert at no charge, with a take-home of white chocolate and spice; they’ve also set up a Girl’s Night Out package where you can enjoy exactly what we did, plus a salad I didn’t mention (because who mentions salad?), for $30/person.  Find them on Facebook.

Like a dad in a drugstore: an analogy for molecular profiling

Good news to share with you today!

My molecular profiling results are IN! We don’t know what they are yet, but there’s HOPE in the air today!

What’s molecular profiling?  Well, here’s a two-minute analogy.  Imagine that your kid gets sick and you call your husband to ask him to stop by the drugstore for some medicine.

If you don’t tell him the child’s symptoms, he’d have to just stand there in front of the long shelf of children’s medicine and choose a bottle at random.  Once in a while, the random medicine would work and the child would recover.  More often than not, though, the medicine wouldn’t work, AND the child would have taken medication she doesn’t need.  Not a good idea, right?

If you tell him that the child has a cold, then he knows to choose from the array of a dozen or so cold medicines for children.  The child may get better, or not, but also he may end up taking much stronger medication than he needs.

But if you tell him exactly what kind of cold it is (cough, stuffy nose, fever), he can zero in on the right bottle and the child will get better quickly without taking unnecessary medication — and without having to wait while someone goes back to the pharmacy every couple days to try a different cold medicine at random.

Are you with me?

Okay.  So.  Cancer treatment today relies on an array of chemotherapy, hormone suppressants, and other drugs to reduce inoperable tumors and keep them from coming back.  All cancer is not the same, however, so it really helps to know what kind of cancer is at work.  Some people, like my neighbor Frank, have had cancers of unknown primary origin.  The doctors can’t tell where the cancer started, so they don’t have much help in narrowing down the specifics.  Treatment of cancer of unknown primary is in its infancy, and the choice of chemotherapy drug can be a little like choosing a random bottle off the shelf.

Those of us who are lucky enough to know where our cancer started have some clues.  We know that we have breast cancer, for example, and we know what part of the shelf to look on for the appropriate medicine.  Beyond that, we know that we have specific markers for our breast cancer — ER+, PR-, HER-2- inflammatory breast cancer, for example, which is what I have.  When my oncologist considers treatments, she’s like the father in the drugstore who knows his kid has a cold.  There are a handful of possible treatments that could work, but some won’t be effective enough, and some are overkill.

How can oncologists choose the right chemotherapy right away?  In January, researchers announced new successes in clinical trials where the patient’s cancerous tissue underwent molecular profiling in a laboratory to identify the exact targets where the cancer is vulnerable.  By knowing what the cancer really looks like, the treating oncologist can then choose a chemotherapy (drug) to treat not just cancer, and not just breast cancer, but the EXACT cancer that the patient actually HAS.  This is incredible and exciting new research, peeps.  I’ve heard over and over this year about the potential power of personalized medicine, and this is MY opportunity to try it out.

I’m excited.  I don’t know if my particular results will call for a particular treatment, but I’m so happy today that this is even a possibility.

In other news, radiation starts tomorrow. I’m not at all worried about it; we’re just going to treat it as an inconvenience until it gets all hurty and stuff.  I’ll have four fields of radiation, two in my armpit and two across my chest from different angles, so as not to irradiate my lungs or heart too much (both cause damage).  I’ll lie down for treatment, they’ll push and pull my limbs until my tattoos are lined up just exactly with the positioning light beams, and then they’ll leave the room as the machine moves into position and sends x-rays onto my skin and the tissue below. Think of it like a rather unpleasant tanning bed, where the cover doesn’t descend, but a small portion of it moves into position so that the lamp shines just on a particular part of your body at a time.  In fact, that’s what I tell my kids happens during radiation:  the light shines on my chest, and I get a sunburn.

The goal of radiation is to kill any remaining cancer cells that escaped before surgery (my pathology report showed that the cancer did escape from each of the 13 positive lymph nodes into the surrounding tissue in my armpit, but both were removed during surgery) and make the area inhospitable for cancer to return.

My latest science policy paper was accepted! Working title:  Principal investigators and project managers: insights from the Discovery line of small planetary missions.  No, it’s not bench science, but on the plus side, I don’t have to have a multi-million dollar mass spectrometer taking up space in my guest bedroom.

So there, cancer!  I’ve got the trifecta today:  treatment, possibility of new and targeted treatment, and accomplishments that have nothing to do with cancer.

Today is a win for me, not the cancer.