Everything Changes - The Guide to Young Adult Cancer

Today I’m hosting Patients For A Moment, a bi-weekly blog carnival with links to select patient blogs.  I’ve created four themes for this edition. Enjoy reading and be sure to catch the November 18 installment on Chronic Babe.

Melting My Stone Cold Heart
After the flood of breast cancer stories in Pinktober, I wondered if patient stories could still melt me or if I’d become inoculated and immune to the tender heartedness of illness.  Nope.  Nine year old Chloe made me melt.  Steve Catoe writes about her in A Beautiful Heart on his blog Adventures of A Funky Heart.

Intimacy is palpable as banter unfolds between Alex Hohmann and his nurse Jill in Laughter Where You Least Expect It on Aegletes: Alex’s thoughts on cancer, politics, being gay, music and so much more.

Can we wear our feelings and kvetch about a new diagnosis or do we have to be good solders fighting the good fight?, wonders Barbara Kivowitz in The Shape of Grief on her blog In Sickness and In Health.

Helping 101
Need Cliff Notes for schooling family and friends on how to help you when you’re sick?  See Bridget McCullough’s  Back From the Brink on My Cancer Deployment.

Chris Blumer’s  A Streetcar Named Dilaudid on Chemo and Vino dives into the emotionally charged terrain of saying ‘Thank You’.

Do you get help from God or find strength in flying solo?  Here’s the post that elicited the comment “Nobody likes someone pissing in their Jesus flakes.”   What’s Your Cancer and Religion Connection? on my blog Everything Changes.

Practically Speaking
Young adults are the largest group of uninsured adults in the U.S., forcing us to be practical and clever about getting care.  Leslie Rott writes about    The Things We Do For Health Insurance…Er…I Mean…Love on Getting Closer to Myself.

Living with chronic illness?  Need tips on how to pack a suitcase and so much more? Visit Chronic Babe and check out Fibromyalgia: HealthWomen host tons of new tips, including videos with Editrix Jenni Prokopy. We know she can write but she’s damn articulate in front of the camera too.

Looking for practical excuses to ditch a bad date or escape a spousal argument? Read Duncan Cross‘s hilarious  Dr. Cross’s Compendium of Useful Illnesses.

Laurie Edward’s writes about handling life Priorities in the “gray area in between the everyday and the extreme” on A Chronic Dose.

Eating is a pretty simple daily task - well sometimes.  Cathy Bueti talks about how juicing became an obsession in My Juicer is Dusty on In My Life.

Thinking is a pretty simple daily task - sometimes.  Kate Burton outs her stammering brain fog in My Chemo Brain on After Cancer, Now What.

Dictionary Love
My inner-author and inner-patient geek out together over words, language, and medical meanings.  I’m glad to know I’m not the only one.  Kelly Young dissects the technical meaning of ‘complications’ in  Reasons to stop saying “Complications” of Rheumatoid Arthritis on Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior.

Dr. Wendy Harpham asks ‘What’s the difference between a disease and illness?’ in “Disease” or “Illness” on Wendy Harpham on Healthy Survivorship .

Selena Inouye’s S word in Each Has Their Suffering on Oh My Aches and Pains.

Pat Steer tells what it means to be a statistic in I am A Statistic on Life Out Loud.

Have fun reading, then stop back to let me know which blogs you visited, which posts struck you the most and why.

Patients for A Moment is a blog carnival by/for/about patients.  Every other week Duncan Cross, blogger extraordinare, solicits posts from patient bloggers.  He then features them all together in a singular post on his blog.  Now he is passing the torch.  Twice a month, a new blogger will host Patients for A Moment.  This is my week to host.  Catch the next one on August 12 on Adventures of a Funky Heart.  To learn more or read the Patient for a Moment archives, visit:

Patients for a Moment #4

In his post The Albatross, Duncan Cross writes profoundly about my favorite illness subject: s-e-x.

I used to take pride in being an overachiever, now I balk at it.  Read Baldylocks’s Exceeding Hyperdrive on The Adventures of Baldylocks: hula hoop video included.

Did you know more patients die each year from medical errors than from breast cancer?  Patient safety receives far too little attention, so I was excited that Florence dot Com wrote about it in her post I’m So Very Sorry.

On Brass and Ivory, Lisa Emrich asks an in-your-face, utterly informed, and armed with statistics kinda question about prescription drug coverage to a panel of doctors at the National Press Club, in Not Your Typical Patient. Lisa is my hero.

Novel Patient takes a flipcam to record her second infusion in Rituxan Take Two, where we watch a mundane hospital routine become personal.

Aviva from Sick Momma has been asked 100 times by her 4-year-old daughter “Mommy, when are you going to die?”  Here’s her answer in From The Mouths of Babes.

Leslie, from Getting Closer to Myself, fuses sociological perspectives on health and illness with her most recent flare of lupus, in What Does It Mean To Live In  A ‘Remission Society’?

Laurie Edwards at A Chronic Dose writes about blogging in the illness community and how it has made her a less judgemental person in On Listening and Judging.

Kate at After Cancer, Now What writes about Scars As Fashion Statements.

Cathy Bueti writes about olfactory senses and PTSD in What’s That Smell?? on her blog In My Life.

If you’re ever terrified of getting an endoscopy, Kim from Emergiblog will put your mind at ease with her post I Went, They Scoped, Now Starbucks is History.

I’d love to know which posts you’ve read and what struck you the most.  Leave a comment below.

The Everything Changes blog is a companion to my book Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20s and 30s.  Both book and blog are resources for anyone living with chronic illness.  All are welcome!