Greg Fuson
Turns out I’m anemic.
As in, I have anemia. When I mention this, true friends will retort, “Yeah, you’ve been anemic for as long as we’ve known you.” Ha ha. (Assholes.) That’s because a true friend is comfortable enough to make fun of you; it’s the always-polite ones you have to wonder about. But that’s not where I’m going
Kyna Rubin
I’m prostrate in a Fujian hospital bed. It’s 1980 China, where I’m on a job interpreting for National Geographic–my first gig after graduate school. Fourteen-hour workdays have worn me down, and I’ve contracted bronchitis.
The clinic doctors are required to treat me with both Western and Chinese medicine, which explains the daily shots of tetracycline in my now
Judith Lieberman
The other doctors I consulted called him brilliant. His past patients praised his compassion. He actually responded to e-mails. And, lastly, he was known as the best-looking doctor at the cancer center. What more could I ask?
On the other hand, what choice did I have? After twelve years, I was facing a recurrence of a relatively rare oral cancer, located inconveniently at the base of my tongue. The treatment options were not
Surgery finished,
I finally sleep
Pushing my shoulders,
the technician wakes me
“Come now, we need
a chest x-ray”
Smiling, she pulls me
into position
The x-ray machine
tight against me
Finally getting a chance,
I ask what she is doing
“Oh,” she says “I have
the wrong one
You are not a 64
year old male”
Lying me down,
she walks away
As I fall back to sleep,
I wonder, now bald
what I
Elaine Whitman
“If I were you,” said the radiologist, as I sat on the gurney discreetly wiping goo from my right breast, “I’d make an appointment with a breast surgeon as soon as possible.” His somber tone of voice, the white blotch radiating ugly spider tendrils on his ultrasound screen…neither of these made me nervous. If anything, I felt mild interest: “How very odd. He must think I have breast cancer. Or something.”
Ten days
Carmen Diaz
I used to be a shy woman who didn’t like the spotlight and never did any public speaking. Ovarian cancer has changed all that. Now I look for opportunities to tell my story.
I am a 62-year-old, Puerto Rican-born, New York-raised mother of two. I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2004. But for more than a year before that, my symptoms weren’t recognized.
In January 2003, I started to suffer from abdominal
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