Meet Emily Jones, Guest Blogger Number One!

Hey my people, I'm so excited to introduce you to Well Again's first guest blogger, syndicated columnist Emily Jones.  Emily hails from Mississippi, source of 10 thousand funny stories and 10 million good recipes, most of which she can at least fake. Thanks to a run-in with ovarian cancer, Emily recently joined us here in survivorworld, but that's not the most important thing about her. 

Emily Jones is:  1. Hilarious.  2. Incisive.  3. Guru of her own website, deludeddiva.com, where she self-describes as a "retired journalist and master piddler who is slogging through the new world of culinary delights, gardening prowess and holding old age at bay at all costs."  As the Deluded Diva, Emily speaks to "bouncing baby boomers facing their second adulthood" and often facing the fight of their lives in the form of cancer.

Well Again is lucky enough to bring you a column from Emily Jones twice a month until she gets tired of us, which I hope will be never.

Emily's Well Again column debuts tomorrow.  Read, enjoy, share, and congratulate Emily on kicking cancer to the curb!

Sheep dreams, Seamus...

Hey my people,
Seamus and I duet on his sheep toy. He gets it in his jaws and shoves it against my knee till it squeaks. Then I answer--reach in on either side of his jaws, squeak the toy, draw back, and don't get chomped. Then he squeaks, then I squeak, and so on.
Might sound dull, but what with the teeth, it gets pretty lively.
Not till this week did I realize that Seamus was also using his sheep as a pillow. Does this count as multitasking?

Sequestered to death?

Hey my people,

Thinking about sequestration today. Honestly, is that any kind of name for policy? The word is so meaningless that it continues to resist explanation even as it's grounding airplanes and leaving seniors meal-less and wheel-less—and of course shutting down cancer research.

I've been reading a site called PhysBizTech. (Who knew?) You might want to check out Deborah Cornell's piece on how the sequester stands to damage that most precious asset for a cancer patient: the hope that if we can just hold out, there'll be better treatments before too long.

Here's the link: http://bit.ly/11BfDgd.

Cornell writes, "The federal government is the largest funder of cancer research, and the sequester threatens to cut this funding by almost 23 percent in real purchasing power."

These 23 percent cuts fall just when we're about to solve the jigsaw puzzle.

Cornell explains: "Many grants today focus on basic cellular biology to understand what causes cancer, what allows cancer to spread from one body part to another, which components to target for treatment, genetic mutations that characterize certain cancers...and so on. These are targeted toward finding more effective ways of killing the cancer without killing the patient."

What hurts most is what Cornell writes next: "Unless the large number of people who are affected by cancer ― as patients, family caregivers, healthcare providers, employers and friends ― stand up and tell Congress to get serious about cancer research funding, affected families will be left with few options and little hope."

Austerity is supposed to harm everybody equally, but we know that's not true. In practice, there is nothing so easy as cutting funding for invisible sick people. So what do we do? Are we supposed to storm Washington with an army of people with pic lines and port-o-caths and bandannas? Yes, I think we are. In fact, I suggest we wear our hospital gowns open at the back. Just so we can twirl around from time to time and show Congress the same respect they've shown us.

Thanks to jannoon028 and freedigitalphotos.net for the IV image.

Seamus Friday: Clear my desk and hold my calls!

Hey my people,

It's not easy to clear off a desk here at Chez Well Again.
And when you do, you're apt to find a big yellow dog snoozing on top.

Dancing for Roger Ebert

Hey my people,

Roger Ebert is my hero not just because he was so mighty in the face of cancer. I loved him because as a writer he ENGAGED with what came his way--love, art, death, and everything between. As a critic, Ebert was just what I hope to be, exacting but generous too. If he hated a film, he said so; but he also wished the filmmaker better luck next time. When it came to cancer, Ebert was the finest joycatcher I ever saw. Cancer took his voice; he re-created it. Cancer took his jaw. He kept his smile.

Hey Roger. Thanks for everything. Let's dance.

Israel's awesome new strides in cancer surgery

Hey my people, I dare you to check out this video and then tell me you feel hopeless in the face of cancer. Israeli scientists are already perfecting the tech breakthroughs to heal us. As the tourist slogan says: Israel. Who knew?

Seamus loves sneakers

Bring on the dog shame police--- our dog has a sneaker addiction. From time to time this gives him kind of a Hannibal Lecter vibe as he buries his snout down the nearest Adidas.

Joycatcher moment: car in bloom

Hey my people, check out what spring brought. Light, bougainvillea, Prius: Magic!

Chemo now, heart problems later?

Hey my people,

Considering the toxicity of cancer treatment, it seems like common sense that cancer survivors might be vulnerable to heart disease afterward. New research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center confirms the obvious: Survivors are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease than the general adult population.

What's surprising in the study is how few respondents were cautioned while undergoing cancer treatment that cardiovascular problems might follow.

The Wake Forest study surveyed 1,582 participants who had survived breast, prostate, colorectal or gynecologic cancers four to 14 years after diagnosis. Participants were asked to describe their cardiovascular disease risk factors-- smoking, body mass index, physical inactivity, hypertension, diabetes--and to report on their discussions with their health care providers about diet, exercise, smoking, and lifestyle change assistance.

Among the survivors, heart-hostile health issues turned out to be sadly common: 62 percent were overweight or obese, 55 percent reported hypertension, 20.7 percent reported diabetes, 18.1 percent were inactive, and 5.1 percent were current smokers.

Nearly a third of respondents who carry one or more risk factors reported that they had not been counseled on how to get healthier after cancer treatment.

This may be true, but I wonder whether they may have been offered more counseling than they heard. For me at least, hearing cancer mentioned in relation to myself still produces a roaring in my ears that drowns out anything factual. Especially if i'm being advised to do anything I don't want to do.

(Based on an April 17 report from RTT News)

Serena Burla, cancer survivor, unhurt in Boston Marathon

There's no sweetness-and-light story to be had out of this day's horror in Boston. So this post is not that.

Still, cancer survivor and first-time Boston Marathoner Serena Burla may have experienced a blessing in disguise: this elite professional runner didn't finish the course.

Cancer tried to end Burla's running days three years ago. What she thought was an injured hamstring proved to be a synovial sarcoma, according to an April 15 report on the Boston's examiner.com. Surgeons at Sloan-Kettering removed a malignant tumor along with the dominant muscle in Brula's right hamstring. She was told she would never run again.

But she did run--not just well enough to jog around the park on Sunday but to compete last year in the Olympic trials and the New York Marathon. By the time she was invited to run in Boston, Burla was rated number four among US women marathoners.

On Monday, however, the race didn't go Burla's way. For reasons not yet clear, she ended her marathon somewhere beyond the halfway mark. I hope the problem was nothing more than a stubbed toe. But how strange to feel relieved on Burla's behalf. Who knew that one day we might be glad a runner missed a finish line?