Invincibility. It doesn’t exist among humans, but I love invincibility as masquerade, as defensive strategy in cancer and trauma...

For someone who suffers from relational trauma and medical trauma, having to rely on doctors, surgeons, nurses, and healthcare administrators I don’t trust is a subtle but exquisite form of torture.

There are many ways to kill people without physical violence. All it takes is obedience. A willingness not to think or care. A vulnerable person might cringe as the faces harden, and the backs turn into impenetrable walls. The sanctuary turns into a collapsing house of cards, where someone is always going to end up crushed at the bottom. I offer this writing as an incendiary and hope that the flames give warmth and light to those looking for relief from the cold and the dark

Perhaps I shouldn’t have had the massage. It had been almost two years since a professional had touched me in a compassionate, and not a clinical, way. My chemotherapy for breast cancer had finished, and I was trying to reconnect with my body and find some physical relief. My cancer recovery had begun. But massage releases both the angels and the demons within.

Rule #1 and #1000: Never try to cheer up a cancer patient. Is it really so hard? Letting others be themselves?

I didn’t have a PTSD episode while awaiting my colonoscopy to annoy my gastroenterologist, but annoyed he was. He is a busy, important...

A Canadian cancer patient shares observations from the front lines of an overtaxed and underfunded system

Before, during, and after my bone marrow transplant as a teenager, the experts at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center did not disguise...