Everything Changes - The Guide to Young Adult Cancer

With 300+ posts on my blog about cancer and young adults, it can be hard to know exactly where to start.  I’ve compiled a list of the top ten posts that continue to get thousands of hits.

Top-Ten Posts

1. Your 5 Must-Have Items from Surgery & Treatment Time?

2. Do You Like Being Called Strong?

3. How Do You Prevent Errors in Your Care?

4. Smart Responses to Stupid Comments?

5. How to Ask For Your Medical Bill to be Reduced?

6. Your Best Advice To A Newly Diagnosed Patient?

7. Power of Positive Thinking vs. Realistic Thinking?

8. Did Cancer Impact Your Finances?

9. Scared of Every Little Ache and Pain?

10. Have You Ever Seen A Therapist?

Special searches.
If you are looking for a specific topic, scroll down the right side of this page, click on ‘Hot Topics’, or use the ‘Search’ box just above that to enter keywords about issues that are on your mind.

If you have been reading and commenting over the years, thanks to contributing to the popularity of the blog.  If you are new, welcome aboard.

Over and out,

Kairol

Listen this week to me on the radio talking about how cancer, and my lack of health insurance, made me into an excellent liar. You can hear it this week online too by visiting the home page for The State We Are In and clicking on “This Week’s Show” next to my picture. Mine is the third story. It is about half way through the show.

A few months ago I got an email from a producer at Radio Netherlands Worldwide. “Do you have any good health insurance woes you’d like to craft into an essay for our international radio program, The State We’re In?”

*Do I?* Are they kidding? What young adult cancer patient in the U.S. doesn’t? The week I was diagnosed with cancer, I also learned that my former employer forgot to submit my COBRA papers and I had no health insurance. Here is where the lying part comes in.

My radio essay includes cancer diagnosis, banana milkshakes, sexual favors, lying to COBRA officials, and James Bond. The producers threw down a crazy techno track to it all and voila…. Have a listen. I hope you like it.

If public radio asked you for a good story about young adult cancer and health insurance woes - what would your story be?

I am blogging from my parent’s house.  Tonight is Passover in Pittsburgh, a welcome pit stop on my whirlwind book tour, which included not only cancer conferences, book bashes, and benefits for young adult cancer, but also the Capitol.

I slide my book across the desks of Senators and Representatives, saying to their legislative aides: “The survival rates for adolescent and young adult cancer patients have not budged since Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971. We have abysmal access to health insurance and clinical trials. And we’re not gonna take it any more…” (Cue the Twisted Sister.)

I’ll soon debrief you on my extremely successful congressional meetings, nagging you with concrete tasks that you and your family and friends need to take to make legislative change for young adult cancer survivors.

But first, I want you to see that any one of us can try to make a big change. I have no legislative expertise. I’d never before met with congressional staff. Yet I sauntered up to Congress and gave them a polite, constructive piece of my mind. I’m tired of complaining about what is wrong with health care, and I want to fix it. If I can do it….. so can you!

Karate chopping cancer outside of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s office

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but did you know that at the Capitol you can pick Abe Lincoln’s nose?

Did you know that Senator Kennedy is a huge proponent of funding for research on rare and ultra rare cancers?  Pretty cool.

You don’t need a fancy political science background to take the bull by the horns.

Bulls come in many shapes and sizes.