#18 Ode to the Nurses

#18 Ode to the Nurses

The best way to find yourself  is to lose yourself in the service of others. Mahatma Gandhi While I have amazing doctors and researchers at MGH and Dana Farber who have weighed in on my case and helped carve out a plan I trust will see me back to pristine health, it’s...

#17 Continuum

#17 Continuum

I don’t want to be cavalier. I don’t want to take one tiny bit for granted. And I don’t want to jinx anything. That said, I feel damn good. Bounced back from two months of chemo and now am taking in my immunotherapy 24/7, but have no sense of it, except for the...

#16 Fanny Pack

#16 Fanny Pack

Having leukemia at this time of the war is compelling with such enormous loss and tragedy in the last week, while at the same time managing my own personal health challenge. I imagine in one way or another, we are each juggling hardships, large and small while also...

#15 Decision Time

#15 Decision Time

Sometimes when I am at the store, I feel I have too many choices. As a generally decisive person, I am a bit thrown off by fourteen varieties of apples or a wall full of colored pens. Of course, mostly I am grateful for the abundance that surrounds me. This relates to...

#14 Peasant Stock

#14 Peasant Stock

So much of how I view the world has to do with how to be a good person; what does that even mean? A few things come to mind. Having a set of values and priorities that are in line with helping the world. Living and taking actions that are in harmony with those values....

#13 Recalculating

#13 Recalculating

#13  Recalculating For decades Paul and I have brought together an ever-lovely group of friends and family on our backyard Mt Pollux for Rosh Hashanah. This year it felt important to continue our tradition. I wasn’t feeling 100%, but had so many people help with all...

#9 Bare Bones

#9 Bare Bones

We leave Amherst at 8 am for a day of appts at MGH in Boston Wednesday. Slated for bloodwork, a conversation with the clinical trial nurses, meeting with the PA, and a PICC line dressing cleaning (which I immediately reframe as a spa experience! Ah the cool cleansers...

#11 Grape Juice

#11 Grape Juice

We drive part way to Boston before answering a call that in fact, they do not have a bed for me. When we return home to our bonus day, we think together, what shall we do? We harvest our overflowing patch of tomatoes and Paul makes his famous slow-cooked-with...

#10 Buzz Cut

#10 Buzz Cut

I am blessed with a head of thick, dark, hair, often long and usually straight. If there is a quick, low-maintenance way to wear it, I do, from a pony tail, to tucked up in a bun with a chopstick. In my 40s, as eager strands of silvery white wisp into the mix, I like...

Field Notes from Fifty-Five Fruit  Street #7. Pain

Field Notes from Fifty-Five Fruit  Street #7. Pain

I was not thinking much about pain when I was getting ready to report to duty at Fifty-Five Fruit Street. Mine has been a life devoid of physical pain. Never have a headache, never broke a bone, never had dental pain, don’t suffer from a chronic inflammatory ailment...