Baldtober

Pay attention when you see commercials for breast cancer related items.

Whether it's commercials for drugs to treat breast cancer, ads for cancer treatment centers or glossy ads in magazines to encourage you to buy a pink vaccuum to support the cause, do you see her? Do you see the bald, sick woman, wondering if she is going to survive treatment, let alone the disease? Do you see the woman wondering whether she should remove her breasts and some other body parts to fight the disease full force? Do you see the woman swimming in debt from medical bills (whether she is insured or not)? Can you see the stress and anxiety? Can you see the damage that's being done to her family?

Or do you see a youthful, healthy woman, with a full head of hair, who is probably far below the average age for breast cancer diagnosis, who is probably an actress or model and who probably doesn't have cancer, at least not at the time the photo is being taken?

It's pinktober

Yes, it's that time of year again - time for the annual onslaught of pink ribbon marketing.

I could tell you about how exploitive I think pink ribbon marketing is. I could rant and rave about how little some of the companies actually give to breast cancer research. I could piss and moan about how some companies give to causes that I don't even think are worth our dime. (Who ISN'T aware?) But I won't. I need topics for the rest of the month. ;)

I'm just going to remind you of my philosophy of pink ribbon purchasing in the nicest possible way. And this is very hard for me. I tend to be really un-nice about this stuff.

First, read the guidelines at Think Before You Pink, a campaign by Breast Cancer Action.

Next, here are my thoughts.

If you want to support a cause, it is always and forever best to simply write the organization a check. My favorite breast cancer causes are: breast cancer research at the IU Cancer Center; survivor support at the Young Survival Coalition; and anything at Breast Cancer Action.

If you like the color pink and want to buy something because you like that color, then go for it.

If you are buying something because of "awareness," then do some self-education before you buy. What exactly do you want people to be aware of? What message is it that you are trying to send? How aware are you of the risk factors for breast cancer? For example, did you know that most women diagnosed with breast cancer have no known risk factors and that 90-95 percent of women diagnosed have no genetic risk factor? If you are buying for awareness, start with yourself.

Fatigue and whatnot

I've been battling fatigue for a few months now. I can't quite seem to find the source of it.

I've put on weight - 30 pounds in 7 months. Chicken or the egg? Not quite sure.

In the last two months, I suddenly have high blood pressure. Really high. Stage 2 hypertension, to be exact.

This is not normal for me. I am normally very normal when it comes to blood pressure! Throughout a pregnancy and chemo, I never had blood pressure problems. Suddenly, I do.

Thyroid testing came back fine. This thyroid "scare" I had back in December ended up being nothing more than Tamoxifen screwing with my body.

I saw my primary care doctor just over a week ago. She said, "something's not right!" (Uh-huh!)

So, she ordered a bunch of tests. Apparently, they were back on Friday afternoon, but the doc needed to look at them before anyone could tell me what was going on.

All weekend - waiting, waiting, waiting.

Can't wait until tomorrow!

I am not the cure

Only The Cure is the cure.



Only The Cure is the cure.

(Thanks to Adrienne.)

A little bundle of hope

A lot of time, the breast cancer news I post is not great. It's real, but not great.

Often, it makes me cry when I post it, so I sit and wonder what the heck it's doing to my poor readers.

And then, sometimes, something like this happens.


Well, ok, this made me cry, too, but for entirely different reasons.

This is my friend Kat's daughter. When Kat was diagnosed with breast cancer, her doctor told her not to even think about having another child. She came home sobbing.

"This was one of the hardest parts of my diagnosis," she said. "I felt like part of my heart, dreams and future had been ripped out and stomped on."

So, my friend subjected her body (and those fragile ovaries) to four rounds of Adriamycin and Cytoxan, four rounds of Taxol, got her needed double mastectomy and reconstruction, and since she is BRCA+ (the breast cancer genes), she knows she'll have a hysterectomy one of these days.

But not before this:


Her name is Elise Renee. Elise, meaning "Gift from God," and Renee, meaning "new beginning."

No fertility drugs needed. Doctor be damned.

My friend Kat gives me so much hope. Her baby Elise is awesome.

Promise to Danica

As an active participant of the Young Survival Coalition, I have young survivor friends scattered all over the world. I have the great fortune of seeing many of them every year at the annual conference.

One friend I made not long after I started chemo was Danica Martinez. I wrote about her around this time last year. After chemo and surgery, when she thought she was out of the woods, Danica came down with chemo-induced leukemia. During August last year, her friends and family were working to find a bone marrow donor for her. Danica died Sept. 2, 2008, without finding that donor. She left behind three beautiful children.

A mutual friend, Debbie, also met Danica in the same way I did. But Debbie realized that while she had a huge support system to take care of her while on chemo and through surgery, Danica was a single mom without much help. Debbie made a promise to Danica that when she was feeling better, she would start an organization to provide support for young women going through cancer treatment.

That's how The Breast Cancer Sisterhood was born.

Debbie does a lot of great work with that organization and she has helped a lot of women. You can learn more about it at her site.

Debbie is participating in a contest by O'Cedar to win $1,000. You can help! All you have to do is visit the O'Cedar site and vote for Debbie's story every day. To do this, go to the site by clicking here. Then, go to "My Promise to Danica," which is the third story on the far right. (Be sure to read the story first.) Check the box next to story, scroll to the bottom and enter your email address, then submit. You can do this once a day until Sept. 3.

It's just a couple of cans of paint ...

In order to commemorate my interview with CR magazine and my future blog stardom, I promptly stopped posting.

I know. It sounds like a wildly unorthodox public relations plan. Bear with me. At my day job, I'm a self-proclaimed marketing genius.

There are good reasons. The evening of my last post, I began what shall come to be known as the "Samantha is coming to town let's paint the living room" makeover of 2009.

A lot of things were supposed to happen. It was supposed to take one weekend. The accent wall was supposed to be darker than it is. There was supposed to be crown molding added. We were supposed to have a "finishing touches" montage just like on home decorating shows where it would take approximately 90 seconds to put all of the accessories in place. Just a few odds and ends, like: curtains, end tables, lamps, mirrors, clocks, artwork (created by hand, of course), fancily-arranged bookshelves, a bowl of green apples and a few (wink wink) haphazardly-placed books on the side tables that make me look smart and artsy. (Books with titles like "Needlework of the Victorian Era" and "Politics and Art: a study of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Other Popular Mexican Political Artists of the Early 20th Century.")

So, it has taken a bit longer than we had anticipated. In fact, for the first 10 days, it was a non-stop frenzy of activity. Instead of doing trivial things like eating and sleeping, I was taping and painting. Instead of enjoying his summer break, Andy was doing everything else.

I was a little sad when Ty Pennington didn't show up to fix the molding, but Andy did a fantastic job! The bar had been set fairly low - the entire time I've lived here, only half of the living room had baseboards.

We made incredible progress. In the previous 8 years that I lived here, the only thing that had been applied to the walls of my living room was all-purpose cleaner. No paint. No pictures. The ugly 1970s yellowing curtains that I inherited with the house still hung over the window.

So, in a few short weeks, we surpassed that time line! And some of it was done by the time Samantha arrived. I did have to put her to work moving boxes.

Currently, though, there is not a single room in my house that is usable. Because after we got the living room 85 percent finished, we started on the bedroom. Items from my bedroom (like the bed) fill the dining room because, naturally, boxes of items from the living room are cluttering every available inch of space in my office. The living room looks like all of the closets barfed into it. I can't find the countertops in my bathroom or my kitchen. At breakfast, I shove aside crap on the table so Colleen can have 8 inches of space on which to eat her Cheerios.

And because that just isn't enough, on the next episode of "Extreme Makeover Gone BAD!" we are going to tear into the kid's room.

(As I am writing this, I just heard a loud slam followed by painful man-screams. I ran into the other room to find part of the very heavy new bed frame had fallen and smashed Andy's toes. That's really sad. He is just going to have to tape Popsicle sticks to the broken ones and get back to work. I'm tired of sleeping in the dining room.)

Once the bowl of apples has been placed, I will provide before and after photos. Until then, you must wait for the big reveal!

This video makes me want to cut my hair off
My beautiful and well-spoken friend Becca has made a video on a plastic surgery channel.

Apparently, they have plastic surgery channels in Texas. This surprises me. I would have considered that more of a southern California-type of a channel. The "Gigantic Hair and Sparkly Clothes Channel" in Texas would not have surprised me. But, no, she was in Texas.

Anyhow, to the real point of this. Becca looks so awesome in her sassy black hair on this show, it makes me want to cut mine back to that length.

Oh, yeah, and she is talking about breast reconstruction following breast cancer. I mean, like, for people who are interested in THAT.

Isn't her hair awesome?

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