New HuffPost Blog Post: Tips for Building a Great Hat Collection After Chemo

My new post is now live on the HuffPost Blog. Hopefully the tips are helpful for cancer patients who are now dealing with the bummer side effect of hair loss. Chemo is a great thing. As many patients are reminded, the fact that the rapidly-multiplying hair cells are destroyed means that the chemo is doing its job on other fast-dividing cells (i.e., cancer). Still, the day the hair falls out is a tough one for so many of us. I'm hoping this will be useful for at least a few patients, or their friends who want to do something to help

Chemo Style: A Cancer Patient's Tips for Building a Great Hat Collection

Cancer Patient in the Workplace

My third post for Huffpost can be accessed via the following link: After Cancer, Returning to the Workplace

It's the first time I've ever written about what it was like to go back to work post my rounds of heavy chemo.

The Loaded Cancer Question: "Why Do We Get Sick?"

My second post for the Huffington Post's young adult cancer awareness project can be read at the following link: The Loaded Cancer Question: "Why Do We Get Sick?"

If you read the post, please share it and the Generation Why landing page with others. There are a lot of great (and unfortunately heart-wrenching) stories on the project's landing page.

Spreading Awareness

The Huffington Post is doing a project on young adult cancer survivors on its Generation Why page. My first post can be found at the link below. This first one is a little nontraditional (I cried while writing it), while the other three that will be posted over the next few weeks will be in a more typical essay format and will address some of the tough topics I've had to deal with. 

Huffington Post Blog Contribution

Also, as a way of repaying the kindness bestowed upon me by the First Descents organization this past summer, I wrote an essay about my experience participating in one of its young adult cancer survivor kayaking camps. When my kayak capsized at the base of a waterfall, I was more terrified than I'd ever been in my life, and that's saying a lot! As I reflected on those moments, once warm and dry again, I thought about how interesting it would be to slow down those 60 seconds, to make a reader really feel like she'd been there with me, in that kayak and a year earlier in the hospital.

The result is an essay entitled, Exit, which will appear in Adventum Literary Magazine's Winter/Spring 2013 Edition, available the first week of January at Adventum Magazine: Current Issue.

It's a pretty cool publication, which publishes only stories on outdoor adventures. Reading the last edition made me want to go rock-climbing (but then I came to my senses...)