Category Archives: bio

breast cancer

Care

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I am deeply touched (and somewhat baffled) that many people – some of whom I don’t even know that well! – are volunteering to help during my coming ordeal with chemotherapy.

Throughout my life, including childhood, I have rarely experienced being on the receiving end of care. As a daughter, wife, mother, hostess, event planner, and community manager I’ve mostly taken care of others. I’ve always been the strong one, keeping my shit together in emergencies because someone has to be the grownup and deal with stuff. I love being “a really useful engine”, and I can’t imagine why people would want to be around me if I’m not.

So I don’t really know how to be taken care of. Part of me deeply craves it, but a lot of me is scared to be too “needy” or “demanding”.

I hate the “every life difficulty has a lesson for you” trope but, if you like that sort of thing, that’s probably the lesson that cancer has to teach me: learning to trust that others actually want to and will care for me when I need it most, and then letting them do it.

This may be even harder for me than the chemo itself. Being that vulnerable frightens me deeply.

So… many thanks for your offers of help. I will take you up on them. You may have to physically restrain me from at least making you coffee. 😉

my breast cancer story (thus far)

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about me, breast cancer

Mean Nasty Ugly Things

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I listened to Arlo Guthrie’s – Alice’s Restaurant Massacree around Thanksgiving (as tradition demands). This part hit particularly close to home, and is likely to do so for some time to come:

“…Proceeded on down the hall gettin’ more injections, inspections, detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin’ to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no part untouched.”

 

my breast cancer story (thus far)

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breast cancer

Gratitude

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One of the things I have to be grateful for this Thanksgiving is that I still have a mostly-intact right breast. A few weeks ago, as I was finishing up a business trip in Paris, I received a diagnosis of breast cancer. This last Tuesday I had a lumpectomy and sentinel node biopsy, and should be getting more lab results early next week. For the moment, it’s looking as if we caught it early enough that a month of radiation will suffice as follow-up treatment, and that I’ll be able to start that after the month’s trip to Australia (mid-December to mid-January) that had already been planned.

I did fine in surgery and am mostly just tired at the moment, from emotional overload as much as anything – cancer is a scary diagnosis under any circumstances. I have plenty of support at home, especially from my long-time partner-in-crime (and other crises), Brendan. I’ll keep everyone posted as I learn more.

Dec 1 update: No lymph node involvement and the tumor was completely removed, which is the best possible news right now. They’ll do a bit more testing on the removed tumor to see whether chemo may be a good idea – it was a pretty big tumor (25mm). And I’ll certainly need radiation and follow-up hormonal therapy, but in the meantime I can go to Australia as planned, departing Dec 16th. Time to pack!

later update: Yes, I will do chemo, starting pretty soon after I return to the US (from Australia) in mid January.

top: souvenir surgery socks

my breast cancer story (thus far)

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bio, what I do

The Place for Me

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On June 16, I became an employee of Ericsson, the Swedish telecom multinational, following Jason Hoffman (above), the founder who had originally hired me into Joyent in late 2010, and was until last September the CTO and my direct boss there.

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