The First Day

 

In 2010, at the age of 22, Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. The five-year survival rate for adults with this cancer was 33%.

She realized there was a problem when that the itching on her legs wouldn’t go away. This got worse, then she was exhausted all day. It took a year of going to different doctors before she found a doctor who knew what was going on. 

In her book, Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika describes how draining it was to deal with cancer and fear of dying every day for four years as she went through multiple rounds of chemo, radiation therapy, and a bone marrow transplant before she was declared to be cancer-free. Feeling good enough to travel, she went on a three-month road trip to meet some of the people who wrote to her with support or asked questions from their own situations of grief or confinement.

We Don't Beat Cancer, We Endure

 Getting the language right.

The language we use to describe cancer matters because it speaks of how we are choosing to deal with our cancer.

Some people describe their experiences with cancer as a journey. It’s definitely not a sprint because it goes on for far longer than we expected. Some describe it as a wilderness trek, like hiking the Appalachian Trail, because so much is unknown about what we will encounter along the way. There will be times when we’re exhausted and can’t take another step. There will be storms that batter us around, trails that end and force us to backtrack and find a new route, and large wild and hairy animals show up — a lot of metaphorical, Joseph Campbell stuff.

Cooking For Cancer

 

Karen Babine, All the Wild Hungers

Today I want to talk about Karen Babine’s All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer. Babine’s mother was diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of soft tissue cancer (embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma), and Babine copes with her anxiety by cooking. The book is accessible to everyone who is caring for a loved one who has cancer because we still have to eat to keep us healthy enough to care for them.

Fear of Possibilities

 

Humans have a great ability to predict the future. We’re usually wrong. What we fear will happen often does not and it holds us back from living today with gusto. We live as people dead before we actually die. Which is almost the same thing.

A friend was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, but I didn’t know this. No one did. I wanted to say something that would help, but from my time with people dealing with grief, I knew that my friend didn’t need platitudes. Words are no help right after someone receives the news that they have cancer. What she needed was someone to sit beside her for a time as the cold shadows of her fears drew near.

It Sits Between a Man's Bladder and His Old Feather

My title is a quote by Stephen Fry who was treated for prostate cancer and bemoaned men’s reluctance to talk about the prevalence of the cancer simply because it involved their penis.

Mark Shanahan interviewed Fry for his video series for The Boston Globe that first aired in 2020 and was updated in 2025. It’s a six-part series that is informative, hugely funny, and quite personal. The interviews with leading cancer doctors, including Dr. Drew Pinsky, are filled with details about how treatments have greatly improved since the 1980s.

Hope Is

 

Hope is the thing with … barbed wire. 

Hope definitely doesn’t have FEATHERS, all fluttery and light, although it might if a circus clown like Emmett Kelly is trying to sweep up a spotlight with a feather, making us feel sad at his seemingly impossible task. I want something solid. 

Hope is a great stone mountain that doesn’t move. It’s the bright North Star in the night sky that I know will always be there, even if I can’t see it because of the clouds. 

A Lifespan of Width

 

Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning, 2021

Reading the poetry of Andrea Gibson is like coming out of a thick, brambled forest and seeing the beauty of the mountains rising all around you.

Andrea Gibson (they/them) died in July 2025 at age 49 after four years of dealing with ovarian cancer, but cancer will never be Andrea’s story. Before this, Andrea struggled with the serious side effects of Lyme disease and this ushered in a deeper understanding of the suffering that others go through because of chronic illnesses and disabilities.

Maybe Dying, Maybe Not

 

“I am going to die.” We took a poll in my cancer support group, and that’s what each of us thought when our doctors said we had cancer. 

As it is for my friends, the thought of dying is never far from my mind. It is a possibility, and my oncologist hasn’t said that I’m not, so I exist in a netherworld where I hold my breath and wonder when it will happen and how. He actually thinks I’m doing quite well. He said so, after I asked, because the dread of dying was weighing heavily on me that day. 

A Spouse's Journey Through Cancer

 Elaine Mansfield, Leaning Into Love

Elaine Mansfield is honest in her book about her husband Vic’s struggle with lymphoma. She writes of her growing fatigue from being his constant caregiver over the years, and then, after his death, of learning to live with the emptiness of the home they shared.

What I look for in a memoir about cancer and grief is honesty. I don’t want sugar. Sugar doesn’t give me real hope. Sugar melts away when tears begin to fall. I want truth because I want to learn about the stress and despair that caregivers have to endure as they take care of someone with terminal cancer, and I want to know how she survived when the future she dreamed about was taken away.

Troglodytes of Whimsy and Mercy

 

Brian Doyle, writer. Age 60. Dead of aggressive brain tumor discovered only six months earlier. 

Stark details, and all too familiar. They don’t say anything about who Brian was. How he wrote in a way that made grown men drool and old women swoon clutching their rosaries. How he touched the lives of thousands of people who knew him or read his words. He was reverent and irreverent, often in the same sentence. Insightful. Optimistic. Funny. Stuffed full of heart and faith. An artist with words that stunned with their lyrical beauty.