Cancer

Turning empty hotel rooms into “healing holidays”

September 17, 2018

“You look like you need a l’chaim,” the yeshiva bocher said to me, extending a plastic cup. “I can’t,” I responded. “But it’s Shabbos!”

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Cancer as a chronic illness

August 19, 2018

Cancer isn’t what it used to be. Increasingly, researchers are no longer searching for a cure but for ways to manage it over a lifetime.

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Playing the cancer card

July 23, 2018

All I wanted was a “free pass” – the ability to say to a client, “I’m going to need an extension on the deadline because, you know, cancer.”

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Pay mindfulness forward

July 9, 2018

“I’m afraid,” I told my doctor, “that I’ll get to remission from the cancer but still be suffering from chronic pain. How do I cope with that?”

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Famous germaphobes

June 10, 2018

I recently joined some dubious company. Among my companions are Michael Jackson, Howard Hughes and Donald Trump. We all suffer from mysophobia.

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Please don’t pray for me – here’s what you can do instead

May 7, 2018

“But you’re so healthy. You work out, you’re always hiking, you don’t smoke. And your wife’s a vegan. How could this have happened?”

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What getting chemotherapy’s really like

April 22, 2018

I’ve long harbored a grim curiosity about chemotherapy. Does it hurt? Do you feel like vomiting the whole time? Here’s my personal experience.

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Fateful decisions, cancer and faith

March 7, 2018

Everything was worked out in the battle plan against my lymphoma. Or so I thought. I was scheduled to start a combination of chemo and immunotherapy the coming Sunday morning. The chemo would zap the cancer cells that had grown mainly on the lymph nodes around the back of my abdomen, while the immunotherapy would […]

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Lessons from lymphoma

February 25, 2018

To her great credit, my doctor never used the word cancer. “You have a growth on your lymph nodes,” she said at the start of a 45-minute conversation. “It’s indolent” – linguistically idle or, in medical terms, slow growing.” “It’s the lowest grade of the least aggressive form of lymphoma.” Yet, no matter how she […]

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