Eating Up Information

When I left Dana-Farber last July, I wanted to get away from a work environment of "all cancer, all the time." Now that I'm back, there are some informational advantages.

It's not that I'm uncovering new treatment options -- I leave that to my doctor. But as I continue to focus on more digital publishing, I'm finding more information on things like nutrition. I worked with our nutritionist to edit and publish this talk on slidesare: Fighting Cancer with Your Fork. And in the course of editing it, I watched it three or four times.

Some of it actually stuck.

I'm eating more fruits and vegetables -- although that's a challenge during the crazy spring sports schedule we follow -- and less processed food. And now, after watching this video from 60 Minutes, I'm trying to cut down on my sugar. 

For the longest time, I've been drinking my coffee with a splash of milk and one sugar. Funny thing. When I leave out the sugar, I actually like the taste just as much. Fortunately, chips contain no added sugar.

As Jamie Oliver would say, eat your veg.

Epiphanies

In the world of literature and movies, life-changing events (like cancer diagnoses) are served up with a side dish of epiphanies. Either done as a bargain with God or a self-made promise to enjoy life to its fullest, fictional characters vow to abandon a slew of bad behaviors. Smiles everyone. Music swells. Roll credits.

It doesn't happen that way. 

At least it hasn't for me. Part of it may be that my life-changing diagnosis hasn't changed my life all that much. But part of it is also that I don't want to change. At least not that much. It's imossible to appreciate every moment of every day of every week, especially if you're trying to focus on living life after diagnosis, just like you did before diagnosis -- except for the occasional visit to the oncologist.

There are some things that I am doing differently -- I'm trying to eat more fruits and vegetables, and less sugar, for instance. And as I wrote around New Year's, I'm trying to appreciate the kids for who they are more -- and maybe have a little more patience. 

But those are more resolutions than epiphanies. Maybe my perspective will change but I hope not. I am who I am and I don't need a cancer diagnosis to help me figure that out. 

Name Dropping

These days, I'm finding myself dropping the name -- or if not the name, the existence -- of my oncologist in casual conversation. It's almost a nonchalant mention of her, like I'm discussing my podiatrist or dermatologist -- as in, "I was speaking with my oncologist and she says..."

 I take this as a good sign.

Coming up on one year since my diagnosis, it's as if I'm no longer afraid of the elephant in my mind. I can talk about it openly. But then I realize, it may be a bit weird for other people to hear someone talk about "their oncologist." I'm not sure. Is it?

Silver Lining

For six years, I edited a monthly inflight magazine. As with many senior editorial positions, it involved little writing -- an occasional assignment that I'd take on but never really have the time to do the way I wanted to, or a short item that was easier to just write up than explain to another writer.

The one piece I wrote every issue -- all 72 of them -- was the letter from the editor. It was a place where I could frame that month's issue for readers; where I could write first person in a voice that gradually became my own. It wasn't award-winning (my column or voice); it wasn't experimental or innovative; but if you looked at the collection of letters -- particularly from the last couple of years -- you'd definitely say it had a common voice. We had a couple million people who read the magazine supposedly, but I never felt like I was writing to a large audience. I was just sort of thinking out loud about the issue and what it meant to me.

It was my first blog.

There are many reasons I decided to make the blog public. For one, I had come to the understanding that cancer may be part of who I am, but it doesn't define me. That was a gradual realization that came about through six months of discussion -- in essence, six months of practice talking about these types of things to friends and family, and through the blog. Before I flipped the public switch, I reread all the entries starting from Day One, my original post. As I did, I saw the tenor of the posts shifting -- going from what I'd call more of a diary to myself to where it is today, an opportunity to think out loud and frame an issue that's curling around my mind. 

I found my voice.

An optimist looks at the sky and sees the silver lining in every cloud; a pessimist sees the storm clouds on the horizon. Finding my writing voice is the lining of one of the clouds.