#sloan kettering

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

[lexxwithbooks]

📖: 𝑰𝒗𝒂𝒏 (𝑈𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 #1) 🥊🪢🔪

✍🏽: 𝐒𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐫𝐤

Get the book! 🌟

[aaknopf]

As Passover begins tonight, a poem by Abba Kovner, translated from the Hebrew by Eddie Levenston, gives food for thought. Kovner (1918–1987), born in Sebastopol, was a partisan fighter in World War II; along with a small group of fellow resistance fighters, he escaped from the Vilna ghetto into the Baltic forest, where they spent the war carrying out sabotage operations against the German army. It was during this fight that he met his wife, Vitka, also a resistance leader. The two eventually settled on a kibbutz in Israel. Kovner, who became a writer of poetry and prose, was a significant witness at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. He won the Israel Prize for Literature in 1970.

The Whole Account

You began to love in times of disgust. Close at hand there was no tree, no sign of a living stem or flower, and when there was no reason to sing it was your laughter, jubilant, rousing, saying: There is someone here alive—joyful! And many, so many, then were lying curled up and fearful in grimy shadow, and you began to love without dousing the light of the carbide and went down to the boat that threatened to break up at sea, and you conceived against doctor’s orders. Unannounced, you strode the dead streets, marching—all forty-five kilos of you!— as if on a victory parade of life flowing beneath the surface of all the words, like a fountain flowing, cascading with confidence, telling no lies. More on this book and author: 

Learn more about Sloan-Kettering by Abba Kovner

Learn more about Abba Kovner

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

FUCK CANCER!

Dear Santa;

I know it's a bit late in the game (it being less than a week before Christmas and all), but I'd like to change my wish list. I asked for a handful of things that are sort of silly. But, what I really want -- NEED -- is a cure for cancer.

Not for myself, of course. I don't have the medical need. And, I'd never be able to figure out all that medical/science-y stuff. (Damn it Jim; I'm a sonneteer, not a doctor.)

But, if you could drop it off to someone at Sloan Kettering in New York City, I'd really appreciate it.

PS: This would square us for that whole never giving me a BB gun thing.

[harx1]

And so we come to (hopefully) the end. After 18 weeks, I finished my sixth chemo. Including my surgery and radiation, I had a lot of stuff working to kill the evil working to kill me inside my body.

So, THANK YOU... all of you. Those who came to chemo or visited me at home. Y’all are rockstars!! ❤️❤️❤

️Thanks also to the folks who sent cards and gifts. Y’all are rockstars! ❤️❤️❤

Thanks as well, to the people who commented on my photos or e-mailed or messengered me positive thoughts. Y’all are rockstars! ❤️❤️❤

️And thanks to the people who have liked my pictures or posts. All y’all are rock (wait for it.....................) stars. ❤️❤️❤️

While this has not been as easy as I think my public persona has made it seem (I had lots of bad days where I just didn’t want to get out of bed or I wondered of the unfairness of it all), your love and support gave me strength. And truthfully I know, it could have been a lot worse. So thanks. To each and everyone of you. You, collectively, are mensches.

And now the waiting begins for my next scan, where I find out if I’m in remission or if I have to decide (in the immortal words of fake President Jed Bartlett) “What’s next?”

So, please do keep me in your thoughts.I’m going to extend the dates in my Cancer Care Calendar for another few weeks, so if you feel like visiting me this week (after my work day, as I’ll be working from home or on a weekend (where I will likely ask you to accompany me on a walk or a museum or some such thing - weather permitting. Look for that later this evening.

Again, I thank each and every one of you for making this difficult time, a little more🐻able. <— c’mon, that was cute. Big love to you all. ❤️❤️🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻😀😀😘😘🤛🏻🤛🏻👊🏻👊🏻❤️❤️ (at Rockefeller Outpatient Pavilion)

[startingnowheretogetsomewhere]

Cancer Researchers Publish Landmark "Basket Study"

Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) have announced results from the first published basket study, a new form of clinical trial design that explores responses to drugs based on the specific mutations in patients' tumors rather than where their cancer originated.

This is as dope as a basket of kittens

Take that Cancer

[ticklemechemo]

Chemo #2

Treatment today went really well. Still hooked up to the baby bottle. My doctor and nurse are ecstatic at how well I felt after last treatment. I'm losing weight but not a lot and my appetite has been normal so they're hoping that means the chemo is eating away at the fluid in my abdomen and lungs. I can breathe better, I can finally lay on my back. And my blood clot doesn't hurt anymore!

[nateinreallife]