It seems like only yesterday we were beguiled by the lively, bohemian Penny Lane in "Almost Famous." But it's been a painful decade since, as I know many of you gathered here can bear witness. Those of you who steadfastly supported Hudson over the years, who paid good money for "Bride Wars," for "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," for "Raising Helen," "You Me & Dupree," "Fool's Gold," "My Best Friend's Girl," "Alex and Emma," "Le Divorce," and "Something Borrowed" -- you know what I'm talking about. You're heroes for sticking around this long. That's why it's both tragic and necessary to come to the end of our journey now, to let her go off to a better place. The D-list. It's called "A Little Bit of Heaven."

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Canahuati was born in Texas on Nov. 11. This past Good Friday, she was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a group of rare neuromuscular diseases that, in her case, were terminal. "We asked our doctors specifically if there is anything. Is there trial drugs, anything out of the country?" her mother, Linda, told CNN this week. So after "sitting around for two days crying and being devastated, since there is no cure and there is nothing we can do," her father, Mike, decided to make the most of what was left of his daughter's cruelly brief expected lifespan. Writing in Avery's voice, he created a blog -- and set a few goals.

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I tried to hold her, but she was hyperventilating a bit. "I’m 'the girl whose dad died when she was 13'?" she choked out. "Oh my God. That’s who I am now.  When people ask me what my dad does, or how we get along, or anything, that’s how I will have to answer: ‘My dad died when I was 13.’”

Words. Labels for things, for people. We spend our whole lives making sense of them, I guess. Figuring out which one is the best, most accurate choice.

So many words become insider jargon in families: We are the only ones who know that “black toast intolerant” means “lactose intolerant”; that “minimisize it” means “minimize it,” which big pot is the “pasta pot.” These special languages that families create are another way they are individualized, that a family becomes a unique organism of its own.

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It was the kind of question adults rarely pose. But Abigail (a pseudonym, like some other names in this piece) is 8, and she doesn't have any qualms about being direct. The person she was asking, my daughter Beatrice, likewise didn't hesitate in her reply.

Abigail is new to our school this year. She is in every way a typical second-grader, except that she was born without a left hand. It's a trait that makes her undeniably noticeable, and so, sometimes, people ask questions. Sometimes Abigail has questions of her own. Sometimes, when you're different, you want to know.

When Bea told me what Abigail had inquired about a few weeks ago, I'd winced a little, wondering how my child had answered. Had she passed whatever test Abigail was giving? I know how frank Bea can be, how she walks behind me when we're out in public, checking whether the shiny, taut expanse of bare skin on my scalp is visible. "Mom, your bald spot," she'll say when we're in a restaurant, fussing with locks to try to hide the five-centimeter circle where, a year and a half ago, I had surgery to remove cancer.

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My oncologist says that whoever came up with the phrase "the gift of cancer" has the worst taste in gifts she's ever heard of. But though it's not exactly a set of car keys under the seat, cancer has, for the past year and a half, been the gift I've been given. And from an initial malignant diagnosis of melanoma through surgery through a Stage 4 rediagnosis through a last-ditch, Phase 1 clinical trial to a recovery that has stunned the research community, I've shared this adventure with the readers of Salon. And along the way, you've given so much in return. You've told me your own experiences with illness, with the healthcare system, with grief and frustration, and with the ways a shattering experience -- either your own or that of someone you love -- can turn life around. Sometimes even for the better. So it was a unique privilege to get to talk to a few of you recently for a Salon webcast, and answer your questions on life here in Cancer Town. For those of you who couldn't make it live, videos of the full webcast are posted below.

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One of the first things you have to deal with when faced with a life-altering illness is the decision about whom you're going to tell, and how. When I learned I had malignant melanoma a year and a half ago, I told my editor before I told my family. (OK, I was on a deadline at the time.) Two days later, I told the whole world in a cover story for Salon. Two months ago, Boing Boing writer Xeni Jardin live tweeted her first mammogram – and her stunning diagnosis of breast cancer – to thousands of followers. For some of us, the diagnosis is where we find our voice. For others that kind of candor isn't an option, for either professional or personal reasons.

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I'd thought I would. Months ago, when the treatment was just starting and my fate was uncertain, life without a flurry of infusions and blood work seemed unimaginable. That was around the time my friend, the writer Anne Stockwell, wrote to say that she was planning a Web community called WellAgain. "We cancer cases get amazing and heroic care during treatment," she wrote, "but after is when the emotional hammer hits, and somehow after is exactly when we find ourselves alone again." The name, she explained, "refers to the fact that cancer never gives you the certainty that you're well again. So you have to decide what well again is for you."

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Yet when the news broke Tuesday that Komen was ending its funding for Planned Parenthood breast cancer screenings and services, the organization's eagerness to throw Planned Parenthood – and the women who depend upon it – under the bus wasn't surprising. It's actually thoroughly unshocking for this venerated organization to pull such a crass, insensitive move.

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People with metastatic, Stage 4 melanoma rarely get happy endings. They usually just get endings. The odds of surviving five years once the cancer has spread into your lungs and bloodstream are generally ballparked at around 10 percent. So when I entered a Phase I immunotherapy clinical trial in October, I knew the whole enterprise had the pungent aroma of Last Ditch. My doctors said brightly that my relative youth and good health made me "an ideal candidate." They said that the drug combination I'd be on – the newly approved Ipilimumab and the experimental, sexily named MDX-1106 – were highly "promising." And because it was a trial, Bristol-Myers Squibb would essentially foot the bill. They had also just told me that the malignant cancer I had surgery for in 2010 had broken off; there was now a tumor in my lung and another one under the flesh of my back. In the stark absence of other options, I signed a 27-page consent form alerting me to potential side effects from diarrhea to hepatitis and even death. And with that, I started on a protocol that I hoped wouldn't kill me before the cancer did.

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Obsessed with idea of being alone in a room w/old unwanted glassware & crockery, obliterating things till satiated, then someone else sweeps 7:25 AM Aug 3rd, 2009 from web

Consider the supermarket sagas. It was a place I spent a lot of time, both because I had young children to feed and because that’s where the pharmacy was. I would wait in line to pick up the narcotics and antiemetics, trying not to look at the varied pleasure-enhancing condoms. If my husband Kevin hadn’t “followed” me, I would have whipped out my phone to share some bitter thoughts about ribbed strawberry rubbers. But when I wheeled my cart away after begging for one or two pills to get him through a Sunday night, I did tweet:

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What began as a small Facebook campaign in December to urge Mattel to create a Bald and Beautiful Barbie has, in recent days, blossomed in to a full-on groundswell. It's attracted international media attention, and the Facebook group is closing in on 90,000 members. Think of the possiblities for cute hats!

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When you go in for surgery, your doctors will tell you not to eat after midnight. They'll tell you what kind of narcotics and ointments and stool softeners you will need afterward, and when you can eat solid food or lift heavy packages. What they probably won't mention is that you might feel surprisingly traumatized.

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Rule 1: You have to take responsibility for setting the tone.

Perhaps you're a total ham. Maybe you've never enjoyed the limelight. It doesn't matter. Because unless you've got a neighbor going through an ugly divorce, you are the top news of the day in your social circle. Get used to attention. And accept that it's your job now to figure out how to play this.

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I know that it's hard for you too; I really do. In addition to dealing with my own Stage 4 melanoma, I have in the past year watched one of my best friends endure an astonishing roller coaster of ovarian cancer, and lost a family member to stomach cancer. It's no picnic loving someone whose life is on the line. But you're not helpless. And if you're wringing your hands wondering how to handle yourself, Cancer Lady is here to offer a few simple guidelines. (And lest you think that people with cancer never trip up socially, au contraire. I'll be back tomorrow with an etiquette guide just for them.) But first, let's talk about you, friends and family. I'm sorry you're going through this. It feels overwhelming and complicated. But it's not, I promise. When in doubt about how to behave, stick to the basic rule of thumb that a) It's not about you, and b) It's about them, you'll be golden. Let me expand.

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In August, one relatively healthy year after losing five centimeters of my scalp to malignant melanoma, my doctor told me there were some "troubling" new spots on my lungs – and that they were growing. A few weeks later, I awoke from the surgical biopsy, doped up and under an oxygen mask, and had my worst fears confirmed – the spots were malignant. Two weeks later, after I pointed out a peculiar bruise on my back during a routine follow-up, the diagnosis got even worse – that bruise was another malignant tumor.

In the space of days, I'd gone from someone whose friends had hastily branded a "survivor" to a woman with metastatic, Stage 4 cancer. But just as I was  blubbering through the news, my oncologist offered a life raft in a sea of panic. She explained that my immunologist, who'd recently led the clinical trials for Ipilimumab, the first new melanoma drug approved by the FDA in 30 years, was doing a new, Phase 1 clinical trial. It would combine Ipilimumab with another promising experimental drug, MDX-1106, and for a longer course of treatment. As an otherwise young, healthy person, I was a suitable candidate for the sole upcoming spot in the trial.

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I sat shirtless in the oversize, faux leather examining chair as he eyed the twin slits remaining on my chest four weeks after the mastectomy. I slipped a C-cup silicone breast prosthesis out of one side of the bra I’d worn into the office. “I used to be an A-cup. Can you match this?”

He palmed the three-dimensional, triangular blob and then pressed it against one of my incisions using the tips of his fingers to hold it in place. “I don’t see why not. You’re tall – you can carry any volume you want. Let’s go with a 350cc.”

He wheeled backward on his stool, opened a drawer and pulled out a crescent-shaped expander. I liked him immediately. He seemed practical, matter-of-fact in the wake of my cancer, the way I hoped in my best moments to be. He explained the surgery would involve placing two of these filled with saline in my chest to begin stretching the skin and muscle to shape mounds that would eventually house the implants.

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In the fall of 2008, I spent a lot of time in and around the tiny town of Basin, Montana. Basin, population 250, is a seemingly ruined, poverty-filled stretch along a frontage road threading off of Route 15 between Helena, the capital of the state, 40 miles to the north, and Butte, the famous mining town, 30 miles to the south. This is the middle to south-end of the Upper Clark Fork watershed. The Wild West. The heart of Montana mining territory in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Basin anchors an area littered with poisonous mine tailings, remnants of Superfund sites and cleanups, and all the gorgeous geology of an ancient, now post-ice age wilderness.

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Yet the rush to Monday-morning quarterback his healthcare choices has been on ever since the Apple founder died earlier this month. In a lengthy – and much circulated -- post on Quora, Harvard research fellow Ramzi Amri flat-out declared that, "Given the circumstances, it seems sound to assume that Mr. Jobs' choice for alternative medicine has eventually led to an unnecessarily early death." And now, in a new biography, author Walter Isaacson says that Jobs' odyssey of "fruit juices, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments — some of which he found on the Internet" – exasperated his loved ones and left Jobs himself rueful. "He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it," Isaacson tells "60 Minutes" this weekend. "I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner."

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A piece last month for the Wall Street Journal highlights the problem: Severe shortages of chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics and nutritional supplementation are leading to limited treatments and have caused "hundreds of clinical trials to be stopped." Drug shortages have tripled in the last six years. And with a new high of 213 different drug shortages this year, patients with life-threatening conditions like high blood pressure, breast cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma and leukemia have been affected.

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Nearly a year later, I was in Dr. Mazin’s office with my mom, waiting for my lab results. It was my first week of high school.

The waiting room smelled of stale antiseptic fluid and plastic, curled magazines warmed tables, and several potted plants were gathered together in a corner. We sat down between an older, arthritic man, and a young 20-something in a business suit. I held my mom’s restless hand and stared across the room: a plant in the fish tank wavered slightly as a blue-finned tetra swam by.

We were summoned to patient room number three, and after a few minutes Dr. Marzin entered. He had my lab results: It was malignant -- melanoma. He told us we'd have to schedule another surgery; as he discussed lymphectomies, my mind wandered. I wondered what would have happened if I had just gone to the dermatologist – earlier, before the mole had grown.

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