Okay, so you know how I got to meet Kelly Ripa this summer? Well, I’m going to meet her again next week at a fashion event for bloggers. (Yeah, me and fashion…I promise to leave my cleats at home.)
Anyhow, it’s all in honor of National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, which is this month, starting with tomorrow’s National Teal Day. Here’s the official info on that:
National Teal Day and The Ovarian Cancer National Alliance will lead the efforts of thousands of Americans wearing teal to increase awareness about the deadly disease. Teal is the ovarian cancer community’s color and serves as a reminder that ovarian cancer is the deadliest of all the cancers of the reproductive system and a leading cause of cancer death among women. For more information, visit ovariancancer.org.
You can still build a virtual banana split over at Kelly Confidential, too. For every split you make, Electrolux will donate a dollar to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.
Meanwhile, loads of people have had fun watching the video my kids and I made about meeting Kelly Ripa, who works hard to raise awareness and money for ovarian cancer research. I will say hi to her for you when I see her (again).
“Think Chris realizes his cowboy hat is on backwards?” I asked my friend Mary, who was sitting next to me on the (butt-numbing) bleachers at our kids’ elementary school yesterday afternoon.
“Nah,” she replied.
“I’m amazed it fits him,” I added. “He’s got a big head for a kid.”
“Whose hat is it?” she asked, and I told her it’s mine.
“And why do you have a cowboy hat?” she wondered. (more…)
I didn’t see Lily until she appeared suddenly next to my chair. She was blocking my view of the stage, where I’d just given a speech before 330 people, most of whom would be running the New Jersey Marathon on behalf of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training on Sunday morning.
I’d just cleared away a tear, caused by the entirely unexpected standing ovation — my first — after a speech to “my people,” survivors, and families and friends of survivors who, like me, had been touched (more like slapped) by a blood cancer. I was supposed to inspire them, but they inspired me, by choosing to run 13 or 26 miles to raise a total of about $700,000 dollars for the LLS. (As I said in my speech, I don’t run unless there’s a ball or a chance to slide tackle someone else with a ball. Go runners!) (more…)
The scented pencils come in root beer, bubble gum, watermelon and so much more. Individually, they smell like manufactured childhood, like a pack of bright colored gum or a handful of candies in clear wrappers. Together, they smell like a pillowcase full of Halloween loot left in the back of your car on a hot day.
We will no doubt wind up keeping this bucket of Smencils, minus the few that my son will sell for his fifth grade fundraiser, just like his brother did last year. The problem is that the target audience for a Smencil is decidedly under age 14, and yet the kids aren’t allowed to sell them on the school bus or at Boy Scouts meetings or other places where children congregate. He can’t very well bring them to soccer practice, anyhow, to sell to other fifth graders who have their own buckets of Smencils at home, and he’s not supposed to sell door-to-door. So the bucket sits on our kitchen counter, bringing back vague memories of getting sick at a birthday party in kindergarten every time I walk by it.
And that’s fine with me. In fact, it’s downright wonderful. (more…)
My hospital room view, only here it's from my car in traffic on the FDR Drive.
I made a deal with the Sun: You keep rising every morning from behind the smokestacks that hover over the buildings on Roosevelt Island, and I’ll fight another day.
And then every morning I’d wait, watching the waves on the East River, at first a deep, midnight blue, and then solid gray, and finally, brownish gray as the Sun kept its promise to me. I’d slide off my bed, careful not to yank out the tubes carrying the orange drugs into my arm, and roll my chemo pole into the bathroom.
The Sun was up, and so was I. As promised. But my end of the bargain was harder to keep. (more…)
That’s what I wrote in my Facebook status this week when several friends suggested that I post the color of my bra to raise awareness for breast cancer. I did it in solidarity to my sisters — friends, family members and others — who’ve battled breast cancer. Also, to appease the breast cancer gods because, you see, I had radiation to my chest and I am, therefore, at a high risk for breast cancer. (more…)
Back then, I could keep up with him on the soccer field more easily.
He was 18, and I had no business being there. It was too much, too soon, and yet, I didn’t want to leave.
I was playing right defense on my brother Scott’s “over-the-hill” soccer team, guarding a kid who’d tagged along with his dad so he could get ready for his league match later that day. Apparently, dribbling around me – a middle-aged mother of two who was not quite a year in remission from an aggressive form of lymphoma – was this kid’s warm-up. For me though, just standing on the turf field in my soccer cleats so soon after completing six rounds of chemotherapy and five weeks of radiation was a comeback. Or it was supposed to be. (more…)
Last month, I held a fundraiser and remission party called “Kiss Cancer Goodbye” here in my community. More than 150 people came to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, eat good food at the Smoke Rise Village Inn and dance to music by the Flying Mueller Brothers and the Sugar Hill Gang. They also came to hear my speech, “If Cancer is a Gift, Where Can I Return it?”, about my battle with non Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
My friend Kanokan Sookaram caught the festivities on film, so that everyone who couldn’t be there — and even those who were — can enjoy.
First, here’s my speech, “If Cancer is a Gift, Where Can I Return it?”, followed by a video about the party:
Matt Lane giving his speech while I try not to cry.
I couldn’t pay too much attention to their words, or I’d cry. And the mistress of ceremonies shouldn’t cry, right? Not when she has to get up in front of 150 people and persuade them to give money to a good cause, kids with cancer. (more…)
