Category Archives: Breast Cancer

Isabel Allende and Late-in-Life Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Isabel Allende speaking to the City Club of Cleveland in 2017

While under the Covid-19 lockdown in California, 77-year-old author Isabel Allende has been reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as well as writing another book and enjoying the company of her new husband, Roger Cukras. For Allende, it’s love in the time of coronavirus. After her long-term marriage ended in 2015, Allende expected to be single till she died. But now she declares she is in love and in lust with the man she married last year, and that if she can do that, anyone can. Continue reading Isabel Allende and Late-in-Life Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Angelina Jolie’s BRCA Mastectomy Debate: My Biased View

Photo by Alex Villarreal, Voice of America

Deciding whether or not to have a mastectomy (where all breast tissue is removed), either as a prophylactic or instead of a lumpectomy (where only the breast tumor and the area around it is taken out), is a very personal choice with many variables. BRCA1 gene mutation carrier, Caitlin Brodnick, in her terrifically-titled book, Dangerous Boobies: Breaking Up with My Time-Bomb Breasts (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2017), makes a strong case for prophylactic mastectomies, describing a childhood filled with relatives dying from cancer. I have the slightly less risky BRCA2 rather than BRCA1 gene defect and I admit being biased against mastectomies. Continue reading Angelina Jolie’s BRCA Mastectomy Debate: My Biased View

Living in Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch

John Cleese and Michael Palin performing the Dead Parrot Sketch during the 2014 Monty Python Live (Mostly) show in London. Photo by Eduardo Unda-Sanzana, Wikimedia.

I was busy at my computer working on “Resting in Peace”­—the last chapter of the next book I’m writing, My Wild Ride: How to Thrive After Breast Cancer and Infidelity. Getting breast cancer for the second time had been a sharp reminder that I wasn’t a permanent resident on planet Earth. Continue reading Living in Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch