Category Archives: health & happiness

not exactly back to work

25 Saturday Oct 2008

Posted by in cancer, health & happiness, teaching, work

≈ 9 Comments

Three weeks ago I wrote this post about going back to work.

Unfortunately,  it hasn’t worked out as I thought it would.  The idea had been to do “whenever” classes with a handful of my students for whom learning English is more of a hobby than a necessity.  As in,  we would have classes whenever I was well enough to work. And the first week we tried this it looked like I had enough people interested to be doing at least one class a day.  At least enough to bring in a bit of spending money as well as help me maintain my sanity.  But then . . .

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mixed messages

22 Wednesday Oct 2008

Posted by in cancer, health & happiness, hospitals, life stuff

≈ 36 Comments

So I had two hospital appointments yesterday morning with the two different surgeons (colon and liver) as a check up and revision thing. You will no doubt recall that when I saw the oncologist a couple of weeks ago for my updated prognosis she told me that there wouldn’t be any more surgery and that whatever chemo they put me on next would only be a way of slowing things down and not a cure. And when I asked her to give me a survival time frame if I chose not to have chemo treatment she said it would be more or less a year. So imagine my surprise when I got this news …

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cancer etiquette

15 Wednesday Oct 2008

Posted by in cancer, culture, friends, health & happiness

≈ 45 Comments

I came across the following on the Colon Club discussion forum – a list of seven things you shouldn’t say to people with cancer. I thought it was pretty good, though some don’t really apply to me. And I’ve added a couple more at the end.

Hearing that a loved one has been diagnosed with cancer can cause anyone to be anxious. You begin to think about all the right things to say in your anxiety and oftentimes end up saying the worst. Although the objective is not to cause harm to this person, ultimately you can, with your words, end up doing just that and cause your loved one to plunge further into depression. No doubt hearing that “C” word turns a lot of us into fools, but if you find yourself in a position where a family member or friend has revealed that they have cancer, here are some things you might not want to say. . .

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