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Advance Health Care Directives

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Over the last few months, I've had a growing awareness that as a seriously ill person, I should have some kind of documentation in place about my wishes should things take a turn for the worse. Really, every adult should, and I realize now that I at least should have done it prior to giving birth - but as a young, healthy person, it really just wasn't part of my consciousness. Until I started looking into it, I was pretty hazy about what the different types of documents were and what the terminology meant. I learned that a dvance health care directive is the general term for a legal document that spells out your decisions about end-of-life care ahead of time. Advance health care directives generally include two important components: a power of attorney for health care and a living will.  A power of attorney for health care names your health care agent (also sometimes referred to as a health care proxy), the person you designate to make health decisions for you if you are una...
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Hormonal Therapy (Part 3)

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Seth and I spent hours on Friday morning talking through my fears for my treatment, and I cried more than I have at any time during this illness, including at diagnosis. He listened to my concerns and read the articles that I handed him and dried my tears, and ultimately said, "We need better information." I realized that he was right - we didn't need more information, but we needed actual data, not anecdotes. Even the articles from reputable sources were of limited helpfulness when they quoted doctors' opinions rather than facts, and many of them contradicted each other about which side effects were most likely to occur. But then I found the results of a National Cancer Institute study called NSABP P1 , wherein 13,000  women at high risk of getting breast cancer were randomly assigned to receive either tamoxifen or placebo. The primary goal of the trial was to assess the value of tamoxifen in preventing cancer, but it also included  a set of questionnaires to as...
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Two Years Out

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This past Sunday marked two years since my last day of treatment. Two whole years! It's so long, but it's so short. I remember everything, but everything's a blur. Early in my treatment, my mother, a breast cancer survivor herself, promised me that the day would come when I would no longer spend every waking moment thinking about cancer. At the time, it was very hard to imagine that day. But she was right - I can go for weeks now without giving it a thought. Life does indeed move on, and the enormous mental, emotional, physical, and logistical space that my treatment took up has quickly refilled with my family, my career, and my interests. But October will always be my own personal Breast Cancer Awareness Month, even if it wasn't for the rest of the world. The change in the air that happens in LA this month, the chill in the mornings and the low slant of the setting sun in the evenings, will always bring back memories of the end of my treatment. I wept off and ...
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