Letters

Cancer All Around

While at my oncologist’s office last Friday, I saw a copy of your magazine Heal: Living Well after Cancer and was so happy to see something like this for the first time. I brought an issue home and read it from cover to cover. It is just what those of us who have “had” cancer, with all its horrors and lessons, need! Thank you!

Cancer seems to be all around me at this time, and deeply affects my life and life circumstances. I lost my job a few months before I was diagnosed and, although I was able to get COBRA insurance for a year, I found it much too expensive to get after that. Some companies put a five-year high-risk limit on me, and others a 10-year limit! The deductibles were incredible! I will soon be eligible for Medicare, thank goodness, because I have been without health insurance for several years now and have been paying out of pocket for any follow-up I’ve needed. My oncologist is helpful in that she has given me a discounted rate for my follow-up exams with her for the past four years, stressing the importance of these exams. I am very thankful for people like her and very angry with insurance companies who “punish” those of us who have the misfortune to get cancer.

Carolyn Little | Gainesville, Va.

The People No One Writes About

It was no surprise when my social worker handed me your magazine and once more I saw survivorship portrayed by healthy-looking faces, active, affluent people and flashy ads. Even “Defining Survivorship” [an interview with Julia Rowland, PhD, director of the Office of Cancer Survivorship] avoided any discussion of people who are survivors of cancer but are leading considerably less glamorous lives than those on which your magazine seems to focus.

Some of us spend our lives going to constant rounds of doctors for even-newer medications to try to heal us from the side effects of cancer treatment. Survivorship? Waiting for the oxygen delivery truck to come so someone will refill my liquid oxygen tank so that I might be able to fill my portable device and get outdoors at least once today. Survivorship is friends who have fallen by the wayside because five years of recovery was not what they signed up for. Thriving? When you are dependent on delivered meals because your disability check doesn’t even cover the rent, how does one thrive, I ask you? We are the people no one writes about, no one photographs, nor do people want to acknowledge we exist. We are only semi-successes of the medical world, shoved into the shadows.

Sheila J. Cohen | San Francisco

Feeling Hopeful

The premiere issue of Heal is fabulous. From the cover photo and throughout all the articles, I felt hope. Dan Shapiro’s article “Return to Normal Rodeo” was very, very funny. LOL indeed! I recommended the magazine to my newsletter subscribers. This is the first time I have done that, but it is just such an outstanding magazine, I couldn’t help myself for wanting to share! I look forward to the next issue.

Haralee Weintraub | Portland, Ore.

Unique Needs of Children

I have read your premiere issue of Heal from cover to cover — it is just wonderful! I am a parent of a childhood cancer survivor, and I found the issue to be smart, practical and informative.

I would like to request that a special page be dedicated to the issues of childhood cancer survivorship. Their needs are unique — their issues lifelong. All treatments have residual effects and we see this the most in our children.

My son was 9 months old when diagnosed with hepatoblastoma, stage 4 — an aggressive, mostly fatal disease. He is now 5, a true miracle. However, his life is marked by both minor and major issues.

While parents fight for our children’s lives, it is also the quality of life we think about. We are charged with making decisions for our children, and they must accept what we decide to do.

I would love a section in Heal that would focus on childhood cancer survivorship issues.

Stacey Licht | East Windsor, N.J.

Editor’s Note: While we do not have a section dedicated to childhood survivorship, we do plan to focus on a variety of issues related to this topic in upcoming editions.

I Am More Than the Disease

I have difficulty with the use of words like “war on cancer”; war is not a healing word. There are books that talk about these word choices in our society today, too often used. We need to take a serious look at this. War is a violent word.

I have gone through the cancer experience but do not want to be called a survivor that fought a courageous battle. I am more than the disease that I was diagnosed with. Many people have serious trials in life. Do you call the parent of a child who has died a survivor?

Nancy Thorson | Stevens Point, Wis.

Clarification

A listing and photo caption on page 63 of the Summer issue reported different online addresses for Planet Cancer. The organization’s official website is www.planetcancer.org.

WRITE US: E-Mail correspondence to editor@healtoday.com, or write to us at “Letters”, Heal magazine, CURE Media Group, 3500 Maple Ave., Suite 750, Dallas, TX 75219. Please include your full name and hometown. Submissions will be edited for grammar, spelling, length and content.