Hi all!

I'm a great aunt again!  Little (and I do mean little) Brooklyn Grace was born to a weary but happy Mom (Deanna) and a happy Dad (Tim).  She's adorable from the photos I've seen and I can't wait to hold her.

Instead of posting today on my own blog, let me refer you to the guest blog I did on the Beyond Breast Cancer website, run by a delightful woman named Marie.

There's lots of interesting posts on her blog, so take some time to explore, if you've got the time to spare.  (Tim and Deanna are exempt...new parents and all.)

An op-ed in today's LA Times really got me going...so much so that I wrote a letter to the editor.  The op-ed, titled "When I'm really old, put me on that ice floe" by Ira Rosofsky is generally about the rationing of health care that happens "naturally" within our current system to folks who can't afford insurance or are underinsured.

He goes on to talk about Medicare as being the ice floe for elderly folks who account for 1/4 of all medical expenditures.  And then have the temerity to require nearly 30% of all Medicare expenditures for end of life care.  (Thoughtless bastards, these old folks.)

From there, he goes on to refererence an article about the relative cost/benefit equation of cetuximab (a chemo drug) for people with non-small cell lung cancers.  He notes that the average life extension for such patients is 1.2 months at a cost of $80,000.

"That means it would cost $800,000 to prolong the life of a patient for one year," he says.

Unfortunately, Rosofsky doesn't realize (or found it inconvenient) to address the definition of "average."  Some patients no doubt have much more benefit from the drug...others have none.  So his $800,000 for an extra year doesn't work.

More irritatingly, he trots out the cultural paradigm of what such life extension is like by saying, "...not to mention the pain and suffering and the reduced quality of life from a treatmehnt that marginally prolongs life."

As someone who has expensive chemo drugs every other week, I would like to point out to Mr. Rosofsky (and to all and sundry) that our cultural trope about cancer treatments being "hell" are not so for many, if not the majority, of people living with cancer.

I like my life on chemo quite well, thank you.  Don't be shoving me onto your ice floe.

As many of you know, there was good news on the colon cancer front today.  It appears that I will be heading for liver resection surgery at the end of July or the beginning of August.  The surgeon expects to remove about 90% of my tumors while taking about 50% of my liver.

Thanks to our Creator for making us with regenerative livers!  After my liver regrows, we will revisit my status to see if a stage 2 resection of the remaining 10% of the tumors make sense.

Interesting liver resection fact #1: They don't just take out the area where the tumors are now...they take out the areas where the tumors showed at diagnosis.  So while I have shrunk the number of tumors and the volume of remaining tumors by half (thanks to God, prayers, chemo, diet, visualization and good fortune), they still take out the chunks that used to have tumors there. 

Interesting liver resection fact #2:  They'll also be taking out my gall bladder at the same time.

Interesting liver resection fact #3: (For those who've had hemocolectomies, stomach resections and/or been at bedside for people who have)--NO TUBE DOWN THE THROAT!  Yaay!

So...now to what I'm asking YOU to do.  One of the sites that I find most useful in this fight (C3--Colorectal Cancer Coalition)...and coincidentally the site where I first ran across my second opinion doctor, Heinz-Josef Lenz, is part of a contest to receive a $25,000 grant to upgrade their social media capabilities.

I'm asking folks to support this by voting for C3 to receive the funds for two reasons:

1.  Colon cancer is the 3rd most common form of cancer, yet it lags behind in awareness by a significant degree other forms of cancer (breast, lung, prostate to name a few...heck, since Ruth Ginsberg and Patrick Swayze are both fighting it, we probably lag behind pancreatic cancer in awareness).

2.  Colon cancer is highly preventable if caught early, during screenings.  Social media will be critical to getting younger folks (20-40) to recognize symptoms that could lead to screenings and save their lives...literally.

So please click on the link below to C3 help get the word out.  If you twitter or have a Facebook account, there are other ways to help, listed below.



§If you haven’t voted for C3 yet, do it. Now. Click this link, fill in your email address and submit. MindComet will only use your email address to make sure all votes are unique.

§If you have a Twitter account, then copy/paste this message into a tweet and post. Each tweet counts as an additional vote (only the first tweet counts, no ballot stuffing).

RT to help Colorectal Cancer Coalition Inc. win a 25K social media makeover http://ow.ly/4pcs @CommuniCause #cause2455

§Post about this to your Facebook wall, including this link which will automatically fill in our organization name: http://www.communicause.com/2455. Your friends and family probably already know that colorectal cancer matters to you. Let them know that their support of this campaign is important to you too.

Thanks y'all!

(To be sung to the tune of "Reunited.")

I did a bit of noodling around some interesting political articles today, but don't have the oomph to write about them (or respond to posts) yet.  And I've got questions to write out for the surgeon still.  So this disconnect blurt will have to do.

I did have a productive day.  Met with my sister-in-law Cindy this morning via Skype.  Worked on the first draft of another section of Golf on Monday, Chemo on Tuesday.  Did some catch up on emails.  Had lunch with my lovely Mom.

Now it's off to the couch to write questions, do some reading, and maybe watch some television.  My body's really wanting a break, so I'm gonna give it to me.

Cheers!  Fingers crossed and prayers uttered, please, for the visit with the surgeon tomorrow.

I'm back from my (very mild) infusion feeling a bit loopier than usual with the start of the 5FU.  Maybe it's just that I'm tired after 4 rounds of golf (54 holes total) in 5 days.  At any rate, I am headed to the couch for a little television viewing.

I re-met a wonderful woman in chemo today.  She's two years into her chemo treatments and looks wonderfully healthy.  (She has a different type of cancer but was also stage IV when diagnosed.)  We agreed that positive attitude, exercise, and prayer all play important roles in our battles against cancer.  In my case, I also throw in visualization and yoga.  She does water aerobics and takes trips with her grandkids.

What a blessing to sit with her for the first half of chemo and have her "infuse" me with good energy.

That's all for now!  Thanks for checking in.

I've been busy meeting with doctors, hearing incredibly wonderful news, feeling slightly surreal and celebrating the news with Dan.  (And with tons of emails and phone calls from Team Laura and beyond.)  So...no time for a blog the past few days.  I've been too busy doing the happy dance.

My apologies to readers who long for serious stuff: political commentary, saavy movie reviews, the odd poem or two.

That said, we did take in a movie this evening.  Public Enemies with Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard (who won an Oscar a few years back for her performance in La Vie En Rose).  I enjoyed the performances overall.  Depp has some great moments, Cotillard is wonderful.  Bale seemed a bit workmanlike in his role, but also had a few good scenes, especially when he was conflicted over methods used to "get" Dillinger.

Unfortunately, Billy Crudup was woefully miscast as J. Edgar Hoover.  And equally unfortunate is that the movie is more of a biopic than a story.  So few of the qualities that appeal most in movies are present.  There is no real story arc, no transformation of character, and really only one person with whom the viewer can readily identify--"Billie," Dillinger's onscreen girlfriend.

I also found it somewhat disturbing that in the end, I was rooting for Dillinger/Depp over Purvis/Bale.  I could have been influenced by the fact I find Depp more appealing as a person and actor...but I also believe that the movie pushes the audience to sympathize with Dillinger by romanticizing him through the vehicle of his love story with Billie.  The film also pushes the audience away from sympathizing with the FBI by emphasizing the brutality of law enforcement during the era.  I'd have to see the (longish) film again to be sure of why exactly I felt the violence done by Dillinger's gang was somehow less disturbing than the violence done by the FBI.  But I'm not sure I'll be up for that for a while.

Bottom line?  It's an interesting film with some good performances.  A good way to stay out of the summer heat, but not an Oscar contender, imho.  (Although they are going to have 10 nominees next time, so who knows?)

In the meantime, I'm taking my happy dance and going to bed.

Howdy, ya'll.  I had quite a fun day today.  Breakfast with Dan.  A nice long shower (to last me 3 days).  A 2 1/2 hour infusion followed by lunch with my long-time friend, Peggy Edwards. 

She and I chatted about various projects she's been working on and the book I've begun working on (click here for the Introduction to Golf on Monday, Chemo on Tuesday: One Woman's Approach to Advanced Cancer.)  Then it was home for more chatting before Peggy headed for the Santa Clarita Valley.

I spent the afternoon working on the first of 20 recommendations for folks who've been diagnosed with cancer.  And then I had the ultimate summer pleasure of going for a sunny walk at 5:00 p.m.  Since then I've had dinner and now am talking to you, dear readers.

One other thing that made the day most pleasant was reading a positive article in the LA Times about South Central Los Angeles and the folks who are making a life for themselves in what some would consider one of the worst places to live in L.A.

Fascinating to see how the story these folks have about where they live and how they invest time and energy in making their homes beautiful reflects the lessons I've learned about thriving even though I have cancer.  It's so very much about the stories we tell ourselves.

I just read a very interesting article by a man who wrote the book (literally)on Fish.  An advocate of eating this healthy alternative to beef and chicken, he's coming to see that many of the fish we consume are either not good for the environment because they're farmed, or not sustainably fished right now.

He ended the article by talking about his new personal guidelines for eating fish.  One of them is "not to let perfect become the enemy of good."  I found his statement really resonating in my head around two things:

1.  The up-in-the-air status of my liver resection surgery (due to my surgeon being in the Ukraine and my oncologist having questions about the strategy).

2.  The DOMA brief filed by the Department of Justice against the plaintiffs (and supporting the Defense of Marriage Act) and its relationship to President Obama's stated aims of repealing DOMA and "Dont' Ask, Dont' Tell."

Trust me, these all work together!

Taking the Obama administration first, I just emailed a friend that I'm not surprised that Obama is doing some foot dragging on these issues.  I doubt seriously that he read, let alone made suggestions for improving, the relatively offensive brief.  But I do believe there's been a conscious decision by his administration to let the culture wars die down in order to accomplish more pressing and far reaching agenda items.

In other words, he's not letting perfect (sticking with everything you've ever said without prioritizing and/or changing your mind) be the enemy of good (accomplishing the most important reforms first and letting others do some brewing before they come to fruition).

In terms of my surgery, there is some question by my oncologist whether or not this strategy (staged liver resection and rfa ablation for those tumors too deep to remove) is the best route, or even feasible.  Remember, he's a generalist and I went last week to see a specialist...so it's reasonable that he has questions.  Even admirable.

And at the same time, I believe that surgery will end up being my best, if imperfect option.  There's a belief that tumors will recur from rfa treated metasteses.  Okay, but that's down the road.  And who knows what will be at the forefront of the battle against colon cancer then?

I don't want perfect to become the enemy of good when it comes to my health, healing and hope for cure.  It's how I've dealt with this challenge from the beginning.  Using the best information about this complex system known as Laura Morefield, I choose.  Subject to change as new information comes in.  Trusting my medical team.  But mostly, trusting my own inner, God-given voice.

One of the many projects I have up in the air these days is a book/workshop/article on dealing with a diagnosis of advanced cancer in today's medical environment.  As part of the process in prepping the book, I'm doing a lot of reading of non-fiction books these days--books centered around change, hope, specific medical conditions and self-help.

This past week, Erik and I did a bit of browsing at Barnes & Noble and I found a little book called AdaptAbility by M.J. Ryan.  I picked up some good ideas for how I would like to format my book both from what Ms. Ryan did and what she didn't do. 

One of the things I particularly liked about the book was the way she included shaded boxes that set apart more complex ideas, anecdotes or exercises that would otherwise be easily lost in text.  I also liked that she had a final chapter called "Twenty Quick Tips for Surviving Change You Didn't Ask For."  That's certainly a concept I can borrow for my book.

If you're looking for a book on facing change, adapting to unforseen cirucmstances or how to increase your agility in today's business world, Ryan's book would be a good choice to work through over a few week period.  Since I was blazing through the book in a few hours (so I could hand it off to Erik), I found the anecdotes to be a bit thick and some of the lessons to be a bit repetitive.  Managed over a space of weeks instead of hours, I imagine these elements would be reinforcing rather than overkill.

I'm also reading a book called The Patient's Guide to Heart Valve Surgery by Adam Pick, himself a double heart valve surgery patient.  I started reading the book at the recommendation of a close friend whose husband is facing heart valve surgery soon.

I'm not as far along in this book (ie, not done with it) but have also picked up some tips from his format.  He's very clear about the purpose of his book and he delineates at the beginning of each chapter (in simple bullet points) what the reader will know at the end of the chapter.  Brilliant strategy for helping readers/patients quickly parse what's worth their time and what they'll save for later.

On the topic of adaptability, I should note that I read Ryan's book the old fashioned way (book, paper, notebook) and I'm readying Pick's book on my Kindle.  Both seem to work equally well and one saves trees.  Hmmm.

On the personal front, this has turned out to be a relatively easy chemo week for me.  We dropped the Oxylaplatin from the regimen to give my nerve endings a break and also dropped the "bolus" (quick infusion of 5FU) this chemo.  I think both have made a huge difference.  My blood counts were nearly normal two days after the first infusion and my vle days have been transmogrified into sle (slightly low energy) days.  Thank God for vacations of every sort.

Many apologies dear readers for not updating the blog this week...but I've been on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride with various medical opinions.  So I've been busily assimilating those (quite encouraging) opinions into a new framework.

This did not allow, with chemo in the background, much time for musings of any type.  It did allow for some walk/talk time with Erik at Laguna Beach and I've uploaded a few photos of that Wednesday excursion for your viewing pleasure.

The main news on the colon cancer front (I'll provide gory details on the email update list) is that it appears I am, after all, a candidate for liver resection surgery combined with radiofrequency ablation.  This is exciting news as there is potential for curative results rather than just "life extension" results. 

There's a lot more that we need to know between now and when the surgeon thinks the window for surgery will be (late July), so I imagine more assimilation (Resistance is futile tumors!) will be going on during the coming weeks.

So, to regroup, Erik and I are heading out to see Terminator.  That should get me out of warp speed and into time travel.  More cogent thoughts hopefully to follow over the weekend.

TTFN.

Erik

Laura