Inspiration

I was having a moment of darkness, as I seem to do whenever Andrew goes back into the hospital.  I much prefer it when he's home, and I can stay busy taking care of him, the kids, dealing with insurance, etc .... just keep managing the situation.  But when he's at the hospital, it's all out of my control, and I start to feel a bit at sea (though I'm aware my "control" over the situation is all an illusion).   Anyway, I've learned that if you google too much, you can get really depressed.  And if you get good at adjusting your search terms, you can find even more information and it gets worse.  So I was really thankful when Chuck emailed a great interview with Jonathan Alter, a journalist who was diagnosed with Mantle Cell lymphoma in 2004, at 46.  Naturally, as a journalist he tried to uncover everything he could about his disease.  I was mostly struck by his take on statistics and how they can be very deceiving (can you believe they don't really have good data on overall survival for those diagnosed at mid-life vs. elderly?), but really everything he says just resonates.  His experience is so familiar to me, and it really calmed me down to know many others have shared the horrors and indignities of this disease, and lived to tell the tale.   So of course, I googled him some more and found this great piece from a few years back.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2007/04/08/my-life-with-cancer.html

and here is the more recent interview:

http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/exchange-tv-chronic-illness/transcript-surviving-cancer


*  sorry, looks like the first one won't link -- you'll have to copy and paste it into your browser window.