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What Not to Say to a Cancer Patient

If you read my last cancer blog, “What Do I Say When Someone I Care About Gets Cancer,” you probably know that I won’t actually tell you what not to say to a cancer patient. That’s because words without context are meaningless. “You’ll be fine” may feel heartening one day, and dismissive another. For me,…

What Do I Say When Someone I Care About Gets Cancer?

My father’s best friend, Mendl, whose name was very close to my Hebrew name, Mindl, died of cancer when he was fifty. I was eight. There had been lots of illnesses before, but cancer was a whole new ballgame when it came to sickness. The word itself seemed to strike terror in the grownups as…

What to Expect When you’re Expecting — a Mastectomy

A cancer diagnosis reminds us of all that’s uncontrollable in life. As does cancer treatment. Because patients are not only warriors on the front line in the war on cancer. We’re also the battlefield itself; regardless of whether the bombs are dropped by the good guys or the bad guys, they still fall on us….