I Have a Voice
This week’s blog comes from our friend and a member of a SHARE’s weekly MBC support group, Sandy Moss. Sandy is a retired attorney, a poet and a writer. She is also a survivor of 3 different cancers and is now living with MBC. “Survivor” is a perfect word to describe Sandy. At 19 she was told she may never get her voice back, but her voice did return and she used it on behalf of domestic violence victims, abused children, infants born with AIDS, and homeless teens. These days she is using her voice to encourage others with metastatic breast cancer through her writings and active participation in SHARE’s support groups.
Poems and story by Sandra Moss.
Edited by Victoria Goldberg
Barbara Bigelow: One Tough Unicorn
An addendum to The Searching for Unicorns Pod. Just like Judy Perkins, Barbara Bigelow is a clinical trial success story. As she once put it. "I don’t know of anyone like me, I have had the longest durable response to immunotherapy at Dana Farber. I feel like I’m an anomaly.” In this thuly special blog Barbara tells her own remarkable story.
Written by Barbara Bigelow. Barbara’s quote curtesy of Katherine O’Brien from the article “Metastatic Breast Cancer and the Apparent Triumph of Immunotherapy: Thoughts from a Patient.”
“We will not go back to normal.”
Written by Lisa Laudico
As the inaugural season of Our MBC Life comes to a close, the pod’s mastermind, its creative director and senior producer Lisa Laudico sums up the season, talks about the team at Our MBC Life, how “it all came to be,” and what made her feel less alone and helpless during a very bleak year.
Audio Remembrance Quilt
This is a very special blog and my call to action.
Written by Victoria Goldberg
Finding Joy While Living with MBC
This week’s blog comes from our listener and SHARE’s MBC Helpline Volunteer, Dar Finkelstein. Dar discusses her search for Joy in the middle of a life filled with doctors, shots, pills and scans and offers some simple practices she has put in place to keep her focus on the feeling of Joy. Dar is a professional clown and runs not just one, but two Facebook groups devoted to this very subject: Making Our Best MBC Life and Choose to Live With Joy. She knows of what she speaks.
Written by Dar Finkelstein
Skipping Down Fifth Avenue
Our first guest blogger is SHARE’s MBC volunteer and a dear friend, Alison Greenberg. According to Cancer.Net, 6% of those living with MBC, were initially diagnosed at Stage IV. In August of 2013 Alison became one of them. In this funny and poignant post she talks about the shock of receiving a Stage IV diagnosis and comes up with a clever and original way to describe her fears.
Written by Alison Greenberg
Hi. This is me. (And other tales of vulnerability)
This week’s blog comes from Our MBC Life creator and host Lisa Laudico. For this special post Lisa has chosen to step out of her comfort zone, “lean in and get more vulnerable”. She opens up about her personal and family cancer history, the harrowing time after the de novo diagnosis 3 years ago, her struggles to accept that metastatic cancer had not been her fault and find the right balance in taking care of her family while figuring out how she could “make a difference with this devastating illness.”
Written by Lisa Laudico
Vacation in the time of pandemic
This week’s blog is my reflection on how important vacation and the time away are and how current events have an impact on us without our knowledge
Written by Victoria Goldberg
This is how we started
In our first blog we talk about how Our MBC Life came to be, our relationship with SHARE, who is on the team, and most importantly why we are doing this. “The sole purpose Our MBC Life is to serve this community.”
Written by Victoria Goldberg