Mary Elizabeth Williams grapples with her good news, that the tumors of her metastatic, Stage 4 cancer are gone:
Cancer is part of me now. It’s part of all of us who’ve experienced it, whether we call ourselves survivors or continue to grope, as I do, for a word that makes sense of this new place. How can I call myself a “survivor” when I will spend the rest of my life monitored and tested, a veteran who knows all too well that another deployment could be as close as the next CT scan? We cancer vets live daily with our cancer — in the scars on our bodies, the memories of the people who were kind when we needed help, and the way that we can never again take for granted what a gift it is to make plans.
On a different note, John McQuaid praises Xeni Jardin's brave documentation of her breast cancer:
Her Twitter feed has become a forum for exchange with other breast cancer patients, with nurses and diagnosticians, with the merely curious fans rooting her on, with the women going for mammograms for the first time. It’s a constantly changing narrative in which Jardin is storyteller, protagonist, gracious host, advocate, and consoling fellow traveler on the hard road.
Video via Xeni who captions:
If you or a loved one are going through chemotherapy right now (I am, it sucks)— you will find many familiar chords in this video. And by chord, I mean, among other things, the incessant beeping of that fucking drip machine that delivers the healing poison that makes you puke and kills tumors.
The Dish 