Saturday, August 30, 2008

GEARing up for October

October is unbelievably busy for me. Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably know that it's breast cancer awareness month. As a breast cancer survivor and VP of a national breast cancer non-profit, I have a love-hate relationship with this month. I love that it brings so many awareness opportunities for the YSC. I love that I have many personal opportunities to talk about the YSC and tell my story.
However, I get very pinked-out by ALL the pink products. It started as a few things here and there...the ribbons, the Yoplait lids, Edy's Ice Cream...and then things seemed to change about 3 years ago...now you see pink Cheerios, pink toilet paper, and pink . . . wait for it . . . vacuum cleaners. Last year I even gave a talk about buying pink (or not!) as a form of breast cancer advocacy work. Some consider the shopping a form of fund raising. Others view it as being pimped out as a survivor by some often less than legitimate forms of fundraising. I tend to agree with this view and am skeptical of most pink efforts.
**sighs**
That being said, the YSC has developed a wonderfully supportive relationship with the Hershey's Corporation. Several years ago they decided to do pink cream centered York Peppermint Patties and gave us a sizable minimum donation (none of the xx% goes to xxx organization crap - high minimum donations and no maximum donations are the way to go and the thing to look for if you are going to buy pink!!). Then they stepped in to become a major sponsor of our annual Tour de Pink. Since then they have increased that minimum donation as well as increased the types of products they "pink" out for sale as well as listing us on most of their products year round.
I love chocolate :-)
Anyway - for more on how Hershey's and gear-heads are helping the YSC -check out this blog!

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Do spayed dogs get hot flashes?

Our first dog, Maggie, was about 6 months old when we adopted her from Capital Area Humane Society. When we adopted her she was intact, but when we picked her up, as we knew would happen, she had been spayed. For the first couple years of her life she slept in a crate at night. But slowly she made her way into our bed. First she took naps, then when I came home from my mastectomy surgery, she slept at my feet (due to the type of surgery I had I had to keep my knees bent so I used her as a way to keep my knees up), and eventually she slept all nights with us. We always made fun of how wish-washy she was about being under the covers one minute, then out and panting, then back under the covers . . . this would go on through the night. When Sasha came into our lives, we noticed that she too, moved in and out of the covers through the night.
I had hot flashes when I started chemo, and they never completely went away though they did lessen with time. Recently, I had my ovaries removed as part of ongoing prevention and also as a way to finalize the decision not to have children. As fully expected, my hot flashes increased both in frequency and intensity. And I noticed that my nightly temperature fluctuations seemed eerily similar to those of Sasha's.
And so I began to wonder...do spayed dogs get hot flashes? (okay I just got a crazy vibe as I read back through this ending with the question that this post sounds like something out of 'Sex and the City'. I can almost hear SJP's voice in my head as I re-read it!).
I have done some preliminary online research and I am not the first to ask this question. However the answers are incredibly unsatisfactory because they mostly fall into a "no they don't because we are removing their ovaries so no estrogen left to go through menopause." Oh yeah? Because my ovaries are completely gone and I have RAGING hot flashes. So this answer doesn't cut it.
And how would one know? You can't survey a dog. I discussed this with Dr. Mandi over at my other blog HELP FIDO, and she immediately had some good questions one could ask a dog: "Do you find yourself trying to lay on cold tile floors? Do you want to hang your head out the window inappropriately in the winter?"
I asked my mother-in-law about her current spayed female, Belle, and her previous spayed female, Chloe (RIP) and she agreed - both dogs exhibited signs consistent with running hot and cold. And neither of her male dogs have.
I don't quite know where I am going with this other that to say that I find it fascinating.

Friday, August 15, 2008

I can't have cancer - I just got my Facebook account!

I was diagnosed with cancer at a young age, 32, and at the time I was a complete and utter anomaly. I am happy to say that although cancer (esp. breast cancer) is still relatively rare in young people, there has been an amazing movement towards recognition of young cancer survivors having a different experience than that of their "normal age for diagnosis" peers. I am also incredibly proud to be someone that participates in that movement, and even more proud of the fact that the Young Survival Coalition (YSC) directly impacted the push for this movement.
Now that I am getting, um . . .slightly on in years I am able to really appreciate what those who are coming after me (i.e. young cancer survivors being diagnosed now) are doing with their energy and passion. One of these people is Heidi Adams - advocacy co-chair of the LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance, and founder and executive director of Planet Cancer, a non-profit dedicated to creating a community of young adults with cancer. Heidi is also a 13-year survivor of Ewing's sarcoma and now is the ripe old age of 39 (um - yeah - that is also how old I am!!).
She has written an excellent op-ed piece on the Stand Up 2 Cancer site. In it she describes this experience of being diagnosed young . . . "To put it simply, young adults like me with cancer have fallen through the cracks on every front: scientific, emotional, clinical and financial.
In Dr. Jerome Groopman’s new book, How Doctors Think, he discusses the following mantra, frequently relayed in medical school: “When you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras.” Well, that’s fine. Unless you’re the zebra.
For starters, to identify the zebra you have to acknowledge that it is, in fact, different from a horse. And in many ways the unique aspects of young adulthood are as obvious as those black-and-white stripes: from emotional needs, developmental stages and biologic differences, to age-specific issues related to access and delivery of care. "
Something I am always asked about is what it is like to go through this . . . and I try to explain that it is nearly impossible to adequately capture how hard it was. As a young person you simply do not have the tools in your coping toolbox. You probably have not had to deal with a major traumatic event, you probably have not had to deal with a major illness, your significant other has probably not had to deal with a close family member beaing incredibly ill . . . you just lack all these very necessary life skills that would otherwise serve to guide you through your daily movements.
And yet - somehow you get through it. You get up every day, you go to treatment, you may go to work . . . hell you even go to the grocery store (you just forget why you went - but that is a subject for another post!). You go on! And at the end you may look back and be a little amazed at yourself.
And you might choose to get involved in all the various activities supporting others like yourself, or raising money for research or programs . . .

 

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