Honey, I’ll Freeze Your Head
I stared at the screen, numb, while my husband tried to explain again the surreal website he found. “You put these ice caps on your head...

Any Color You Want
I was planning a trip to Puerto Vallarta, living a promise I made on a hospital bed during breast cancer treatment — a promise to say...

Fingers on My Breast, Questions on My Mind
While my doctor’s fingers massaged my breasts and cradled my almond-sized lump, we had a peculiar conversation. She was from the Bay Area...

7 Tips for Getting Through Your Breast Cancer Diagnosis
When my doctor told me I had an aggressive tumor that had already spread, it didn’t seem real. Here’re my top tips for getting through a...

Chip It
I remember when Gary and I were broke. The night before Christmas, five minutes before closing, we headed into the Christmas tree lot to...

Top Ten Things I Learned from Kathy
1. It’s okay to call God Gertrude and to come to the glorious, scandalous, liberating, unCatholic realization that God might be a woman....

Cancer’s Other What If’s
Cancer brings a cycle of unwanted questions. Scary questions. Questions no one wants to ask. What if they can’t catch it? What if it...

What Every Fourth Grader Knows
Ask any fourth grader. Unfairness is what pisses people off. It’s not infuriating when no one gets candy. It’s infuriating when one...

Let's Not Be Frank
This week I heard a familiar voice on KQED Public Radio – one of my former tenants was being interviewed. I’ll call him Frank, but...

Cancer By the Numbers
A quick story, told in numbers.
