Due to an out-of-state move to an area with a substantially lower cost of living and an incessantly supportive and optimistic husband, I have somehow landed in a place where I have been granted the opportunity to write.  Exclusively.  For a year. 

I’ve been pursuing “serious” fiction writing in my spare time for 7 years, and I’ve finally gotten to the point of “good rejections” and some minor victories.  I hope this page will serve as a chronicle of my successful foray into the publishing world, either in fiction or memoir, or both.  If nothing else, posting my progress may make me work harder.  Truth in disclosure and ego and all that.

Additionally, I’m compelled to share the account of a childhood cancer survivor decades after treatment.  Thankfully, most of us grow up and escape the heartbreaking images of bald or bloated kids in hospital beds. And yes, as much as we desperately want to be “normal,” we and our families are altered.  In that search for normalcy, we favor the desperate belief that we’re done, statistically exempt from health crises.  Sure I followed up with regular doctor visits, but I eventually, conveniently forgot the reality that childhood cancer survivors are significantly more likely than our peers to have serious illnesses as adults. 

As I became a patient again in my 30s, so many people (strangers referred by doctors or friends of friends) who survived cancer and its treatment as kids contacted me.  Some wanted someone who had been there to listen and confirm that they weren’t alone; some wanted validation that they weren’t crazy or cursed.  I hope I succeeded in both cases, but it let me know that there are people who need to hear the story.  My experiences may be unique, but the occurrence is common.  Facing the echoes of childhood cancer as an adult isn’t fun or easy, but I learned that the foundation of support and communication established when I was sick as a kid actually made it…manageable.  In a bizarre way it was familiar, and that was comforting when not a lot else was.