At the same time a nicely dressed older woman–maybe in her late 60’s but quite good-looking, with not too much but just enough make up on to make her look appropriate for her age–was coming up next to me.  I didn’t see her until I’d put the jacket down and shrugged a little, because I wasn’t sure it was “me”.  I looked up and saw her smiling at me.  I took that as an entree to say something.

“I don’t know,” I gestured down to the jacket.  ”I think it makes me look like a jester in the king’s court.”  She smiled and said, “it’s a beautiful jacket.”  I looked at it again–maybe it was a beautiful jacket.  Maybe I was in a fashion box–the same old, same old look.  What if she was right?

I stood there for a beat–then finally put the piece down.  I really don’t think cranberry velvet has any right hanging off my front.   Plus, it was kind of expensive–even on sale– and if I was going to go out on a fashion limb, I wanted it to hit my wallet a little less hard.  But that lady was right, it was a gorgeous piece. She was still standing there, so I held up the jacket and said to her, “It would look nice on you maybe?  We have the same coloring.”

She shook her head and smiled.  ”I have BOOBS,” she looked down at her front, “It wouldn’t fit.”

For a split second I thought, ‘Oh my word does she know me? Does she know I have no breasts?’ But then I saw her smile and her self-deprecating gesture toward her largely endowed front side, and I realized her comment was not about me.  It was about her.

I smiled and started to put the jacket back on the rack, and as I did, she pushed her cart by me and added, “Boobs ruin everything.”

Now I don’t look like I have had a double-mastectomy-no-reconstruction: I just look like I’m small in the chest.  So she had no idea who she was talking to–me, the Queen of “boobs ruin everything.” (Though of course I’m kidding because they don’t typically ruin everything.  Hell, I loved my boobs, until they tried to kill me.)

But I wasn’t going to get into a breast cancer dialogue right there in the clearance jacket aisle–there was shopping to do, fitting rooms to conquer and I wasn’t about to ruin it all with cancer chat.  So I just took the irony for what it was–FUNNY–

and as she passed by me on her way to the shoe section, I replied with a good-natured laugh,

“I hear you, sister.”

and continued it here, at The Global Leaders Healthcare Conference, where I was a table leader on “Patient Advocacy.”

It was so very interesting to be in a room with people who, as far as I could tell, weren’t sick. At least not terminally ill like (ugh) I am. I really liked it–not being the sick one, but the fact that any group is trying to get CEOs of pharmaceutical companies, medical professionals, health care advocates and a host of other interested parties together to talk health care SOLUTIONS.

I told the organizer that I’m in, that I’m happy to be involved in the next event–and the next, and the next–as long as the key element is dialogue, discussion and with any luck, dynamic ideas that lead to answers to some of the biggest questions out there in the health world–

like how to insure the uninsured?

how to get people the help they need without financially squeezing the system?

how do people find out about the best care they need when they need it?

and so on…and so on….and so on.

One of the biggest questions, though, the baseline question, the Q that’s heard around the medical world–had everything to do with almost nobody else in that room but me.  What do you do when someone is told there is a treatment that will elongate their life by say, 4 months–at the cost of, say, 90-thousand dollars?

I can do that Math and answer, “that’s not cost effective.” But I’m not a commodity, I’m a woman. I’m a daughter, a wife, an author, a mother, a writer, a breast cancer advocate.  I want to make my own decisions.

Yet someone has to pay for all this–I know, I know.  So what happens if in the interest of financial solutions, someone else gets to make the choice about who gets what treatments?

Sure 90K’s a lot of dough–but what if it gets me to see my daughter’s wedding? My first grandchild?  My son’s first heartbreak?  Braid my daughter’s hair? How can some one else tell me I’m not worth my life any more?

I know it’s easy for you–the healthy–to say, “but Ann.  You’d never pay 10-thousand dollars for a car that would–pardon the expression–die in 2 months, would you?”  And you’re right, I’d probably never allow so much money to be spent on me for that short a time–I’m too frugal for that.

BUT what if I don’t get to make that call any more?  What if the day comes–and for some it may already be here–when someone else decides whether or not they can get that treatment, and live to see another day?

If you ask me, that’s the biggest issue: that’s what worries me most in this world.  For me, that’s the biggest elephant question in the global health care waiting room.

I feel really lucky. I know that sounds stupid and schmaltzy but I really do feel lucky. I haven’t been the easiest person to be around lately–moody, distanced and a bit of a dud–and I wouldn’t have blamed anybody for quietly stepping away from the emotional chalk outline of me lying on the sidewalk of my life.

What I have to admit is that hard times are hard–and they don’t always just go away because you want them to. Or because someone tells you to get over them. Or because someone shames you into it.

Neither does it work for me to sit here and be a lump and a cry baby. I assure you that’s not my style anyway–in fact I kind of go the other way and keep the party laughing even if I’m not feeling the joke. But in times like this, I have to find a new place– how to feel my real feelings, get through them without being overwhelmed with them, and not be a stick-in-the-mud as I’m doing so.

And I thought cancer was a tough fight….

But I’m doing it. I’m pushing through. And I’m thanking all of you for letting me do so and keeping the faith that I’ll get there.

I’m not there yet but as I make my way down the long lonely road please know you make it so much less long and lonely–just by being my friends.

it doesn’t take into account the people for whom the drug works.

It’s the same argument that In 2009 led the US Government Task Force to advise that women not have mammograms until they are fifty and to forget self breast exams all together.  In studies the incidents of mortalities did not change with or without the exams, it said.  Yet, that does little to shed light on the individuals for whom breast cancer self exams and mammograms are the reasons they are alive today–like me.

I remember watching Nancy Snyderman on the Today show when that bomb was dropped.  She was in the hot seat trying to explain the seemingly outrageous advisement.  She called the stories of hope, the ones where people could actually trace their lives back to an SBE or a mammogram, “anectdotal” stories.  I’ll never forget that–I know what she meant but all I could hear was that she called my life “anectdotal.”

Sure I may not live as long as you will, but I know I am here today because 6 years ago during a self breast exam I felt a lump.  My kids have memories of me that 6 years ago, at ages 4 and 1, they never would have had.  Ask any psychologist the long term effect of a child losing a parent, and a mother specifically, at such a young age and they’ll roll their eyes with that look of “it ain’t pretty.”  And I know, my mother lost her mother when she was 8–not to breast cancer, to something else–but she’s never been the same since.

There’s a lot still to consider in this debate, most notably the cost of this drug–which is outrageous.  And this country is in no position to dole out drugs that studies say do not produce the kind of results that make the debt worth it.

But out there are women who credit Avastin with giving them another day to hug their kids, check their email, see their next patient, or file that motion for dismissal.  So if the FDA is now recommending to disapprove its usage for breast cancer patients, then I can assure you anyone interested in the incidence of “anectdotal” lives lost to this decision has a guaranteed study in the making on their hands.

Which means this is a sad day for sick people everywhere.
And I hope you never become one of us.

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 16TH, 2010

Whether or not you worry about all the preservatives in cosmetics and how they may or may not affect a woman’s chemistry toward cancer–as I do– saying good-bye to such a leader in the fight to bring awareness and an eventual end to breast cancer is a tragedy.

Thank you so much for your tireless effort and work, Evelyn Lauder. May you rest in peace.

I love vacation because it is a time for me to put away the stresses of life with metastatic breast cancer and just laugh, lay in the sun, and relax with the rest of the healthy world for a while.

But I found leaving breast cancer behind harder than I thought.  It kind of crept in anywhere I was–

like the harder-than-usual hugs I got from family and friends who haven’t seen much of me since my surprise re-diagnosis last fall.  Or the worried look on my mother’s face when she saw me playing with my daughter’s hair; and the phantom pains I got in my chest around where my original tumors were located 8 years ago, which turned out to be non-disease stress but sure felt like more cancer clumping up inside me–all of that and more moved like an ugly shadow behind me as I spent time on vacation with the people I love.

I suppose it was dumb of me to expect a full break from my medical situation, to truly live care free and above it all, ‘it’ being the fear that maybe I’ll die sooner than you will. But with me, hope springs eternal.  I figure why not look for the best of things and then if disappointed, well, at least I know I tried.

And the hope that I’m beating this breast cancer will never be far from me, I’ll tell you that.  Whether I’m in Boston or Baton Rouge, Maui or Maine, sitting at a Starbucks with an old pal or laying on a sandy beach on the east coast, I may take a vacation from my troubles now and then but you can be sure of one thing:

I’ll never take a break from beating the breast cancer beast.

Ann’s books ‘pink tips’ and ‘Words To Live By’ now available in the SHOP section of this website.

But for 45 years, I’ve had a father of my own–one who won the Purple Heart in WWII and who ran his home like a bunker of sorts–tough love, tight ship, iron fisted but generous and hard working.  None of us kids lacked for anything that was important–a good home, good education, good dental work. The “I love yous” were in scarce supply of course but then again, it was implied.  After all, he took care of us.

Now in his “golden years” of life–my Dad will be 87 this year–he lives his days in a haze of dementia.  He doesn’t remember your name, or why he knows you–or whether or not he brushed his teeth.  He’s not quite sure why you’re bringing him to “daycare” (and don’t call it that–for goodness sakes) and he’s not altogether certain of what he’s doing when he gets there–

but he goes just the same.  It’s his job, it’s his duty.  After all, my mother said so. And that’s everything to him now, because after years of him being in charge of the house he now clings to mom for every instruction.

And my mother has been my father’s ROCK since this awful, angry diagnosis hit our family like a shower of bricks 4 or 5 years ago–at this point it doesn’t matter to us because it feels like forever.

But what amazes me most about my father, and what grabs me “right around the ankles” as he used to tease us–is that he’s hanging in there.  He’s doing his thing. Forget that his “thing” is clearly uncertain to him–he’s not sure what is for lunch, or how to even make it, or (20 minutes later) whether he actually ever ate lunch–

but he doesn’t complain.  He gets up,  he smiles hello. He kisses my mother with the love and honesty of a child and he tells her how beautiful she is with the consistency of a clock chiming the hour.  He greets each day with a “okay, what am I doing now?” attitude and he always has a smile and a “don’t you look good” commentary to anyone he meets. To me, soldier that he was, father that he is, he’s now my explicit, unequivocal hero.

My Dad may not be getting any more Purple Hearts for wounds sustained in battle these days–not like that time in ‘44 when a whistler bomb exploded near the Med-A-Vac tent, blowing up dozens of wounded soldiers, several nurses and the doctor my father was just speaking to second earlier–miraculously leaving Captain Murray full of shrapnel but otherwise unharmed..

yet if it were up to me Dave would be getting the Golden Heart Award.  Because he’s fighting a battle with dementia that he can’t win. At least my metastatic breast cancer comes with medical and alternative choices I can make to beat it back. This blasted disease just keeps advancing with no hope of retreat.  And beyond the memory games, old music and photo albums that we ply my parents with, my father has zero chance of getting back the man he once was.

And he has every right to give up and quit.  I mean, come one–who wants to fight a battle they can’t win?

But that’s what Dad’s doing.  He’s in the fight, smiling hard, waking up to to each new day and moving forward with everything he’s got, everything he is–even as he loses more of that each day.

And if that’s not a hero, I don’t know what is.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.  I love you.

Ann’s books ‘pink tips’ and ‘Words To Live By’ now available in the SHOP section of this website.

Three weeks ago today I was sitting in a hospital bed with two feet of tubes stuck up my left lung trying to avoid asphyxiation by breast cancer. Today I walked a 7K. Guess who’s feeling lucky?

And the name of this 7K as Irish luck would have it is the “Lucky 7″, put on by the non-profit Change Of Pace.  And I was feeling pretty fortunate– and not just because it was partly sunny and 65 degrees, perfect weather for an athletic event. And not just because the name, Lucky 7, contains my favorite number, seven.  Not even because I had my husband by my side as we high tailed it down the path, passing a few people but watching many serious athletes fly by us, in search of a win, a second, or maybe a tie–while all we worried about was what flavor gatorade we’d get at the next refreshment station.

I didn’t feel lucky for any one of these reasons I just listed but for every one of them.  Three weeks ago I couldn’t get out of bed without two machines dragging behind me and the threat of a bed pan if I didn’t.  I would have cracked a shillelagh over anyone’s head who tried to make me walk the surgery floor much less strap on Nikes and beat feet for an hour and ten minutes through a city.

But today was different.  On this day I geared up, headed out, hit the roadways and practically did the Irish jig as I sailed through my 7K, 3 weeks post surgery.  Breast cancer ain’t gonna get the best of this shamrock. And rainbows and a pot of gold to my cracker jack surgical team for doing such a great job that all I have to show for my ordeal are three scabs and a hint of hospital tape residue.

I was determined upon leaving the hospital this past Valentine’s Day that for this upcoming Irish sweat event I would be ready to go.  And I feel so fortunate that I was. I am grateful to Change of Pace for putting on the run and I was thrilled that my husband decided last minute to join me.  As we walked and watched the Ks go by, I couldn’t help but feel like I was kickin’ some cancer butt as I did.

So that was my day.   I did the Lucky 7.  Or as I like to think of it now, the Lucky Me.

Grab a handrail and read on, because if I’m not on the biggest loop-de-loop of a life I don’t know what I’m on…

I got amazingly GREAT news from my oncologist yesterday.  This is the same oncologist who, like my lung oncologist after my surgery last week, saw all kinds of cancer in my pulmonary region and thought “Oh sh-t, this girl needs chemo.”

But three days ago, my tumor markers came back–the ones that had been stabilizing a month ago and then faked me out when all this cancer was found–and are reading not just stable but DROPPING.  And not just dropping a few percentage points but really plunging downward, in one case by almost 50 percent!

Did you lose your breath?  Join the club.  As my sister-cousin said to me yesterday when she got this latest news, “I don’t think we’re tall enough to be on this ride!”  (She lives near Disneyland.)

Seriously, this is nuts.  One day we’re up, one day we’re down.  Yesterday I’m preparing my kids for a hairless, exhausted shell of a mother and today I’m dancing toward them with their breakfast plates full of food I just cooked because I had the energy–and the hope–that goes along with good news.

How’d it happen? It’s hard for a non-medical person to explain it, but the doctors said something like:  the cancer they found, which on first blush looked like new cancer, is really likely old cancer that they hadn’t realized was there.  And part of the reason they hadn’t realized it is because I look, act and am trying to be as healthy, active and as upbeat as I can. In other words, I don’t act like a cancer ‘patient’–if there is a definition to that, and I’m not sure there is. We patients go through a whole load of junk on this journey and who we are changes and morphs every which way throughout the experience.  I don’t recommend a ticket to this ride.

But for now, I have to thank you for helping me out.  I know this is exhausting for you as well as for me, and as my husband asked me last night, “Do you think we’ll suffer from ‘friend fatigue’?  Do you think at some point our friends are just gonna bow out because this is all too much for them?”  I thought about that for a second;  certainly that could happen. Hell I’m fatigued and it’s happening to me.  If I could step off this ridiculous ride I would, so why not you?

So I figure this:  if you need to bow out for awhile and get some popcorn, a drink and a long walk far away from this Spacey Mountain, you go right ahead.  We will not hold that against you.  (And if you could some day take my husband with you and buy him a

beer(s) so he could forget about this for a nano-second, I’ll buy the drinks.)

This is a ride I’ll be on for the rest of my life, and I don’t expect any of you to hang on to every twist, lift and plummet. I really don’t.

But I do want you to be there when this terrifying machine has slowed down and I can unclench the handrail and catch my breath–vibrant, healthy, and tall enough to have withstood the ride.