giving in to the monkey brain

Herceptin

I think I'm happy with the outcome of the brouhaha over Herceptin in Ontario. For those of you outside the province or outside the loop. Jill Anzarut, a 35 year old woman undergoing treatment for breast cancer made the news last week when she announced that the province had to pay for Herceptin because her Her2+ tumour was less than one centimetre (that's about 1/4 inch) in diameter.

The province initially refused to budge but eventually caved after a massive campaign played out in the social and traditional media. Access to Herceptin will now much more room for discretion when it comes to providing access to the drug.

I feel good about this. It's not that I think that every drug should be funded for every person. Her2+ cancers are very aggressive and, as best put by Stephen Chia, chair of the British Columbia breast-tumour group, “In HER-2 positive cancers, it’s not the size that drives it; it’s the HER-2 gene that drives it.” 

Election

Canadians are once again going to the polls. I am not happy about this. 

I'm sad that the long overdue Bill C-389 protecting the rights of transgendered people will die before it gets the chance to be thrown out by the Senate.

I'm worried that we will end up with a Conservative majority.

I have election fatigue. There was a time in my life when an election would make me feel excited and hopeful. Now I just think, "Ugh."

Presents in the mail

Did you see my scrabble pendant in yesterday's post? My friend Leslie sent it to me after I told her I'd like to have on with my initial on it. It made me very happy to open the envelope that held my surprise.

The bad with the good

Last week, I received my author's copy of the current issue of Canadian Woman Studies. The theme this quarter is Women and Cancer and I have a poem that is part of a piece called "Seven Reflections on Breast Cancer by Seven Women Who Worked Together." I'm happy about that.

I'm far less happy about another piece I stumbled on when I was leafing through the issue. It's called "The Private/Public Split in Breast Cancer Memoirs." It was written by a woman who came to my book launch in Toronto and asked for permission to speak in order to seek contributions - something to which I readily agreed. She also asked me to contribute to the issue, which prompted me to reach out to my writing group.

I had no idea that she planned to write a scathing deconstruction of my book - but that's what she did. I know that all writers get bad reviews but I found her comments to be very critical of me as a person (I guess you can't seperate the analysis of a memoir from its author) and quite unfair. 

I'm sure how to respond or react, or whether I should do so at all. I've actually been unable to finish reading the article. With a distinct lack of maturity, I threw the journal onto the living room floor and it stayed there for several days. I only just picked it up, in order to write this post.

I'll let you know what I decide to do. Meanwhile, I'm pasting my very own contribution below. It's a very small part of a greater whole (and not the strongest piece by the seven of us by any stretch) but it's mine and, like all my writing, expresses a little bit of what has been in my heart.

Snap shots

December 2^nd, 2005.

When I close my eyes, I see myself as I was then.

Short dark hair and boots with heels.

Irritable and excited in equal measure.

I knew big change was coming. And it did. But it was not what I expected.

I was getting undressed when I found the lump.

July 1^st, 2006

I close my eyes and see myself as I was then.

Round, bald and bloated. But happy.

Chemo is behind me. Or so I expect.

I am self-conscious but also hungry.

I eat two burgers at the barbecue.

December 24^th, 2006

I close my eyes and see myself as I was.

I rallied for Christmas Eve but in the end the pain got the best of me.

My liver was riddled with tumours. And I had waited too long for the morphine.

My mother had to put me to bed. That comforted me.

And so did the drugs.

June 25^th, 2007

I close my eyes and I can taste

The strawberries on my tongue

The sensual pleasure of the whipped cream

And the Niagara ice wine as it slid down my throat.

I knew I would soon have something to celebrate.

December 16^th, 2009

I close my eyes so I can think.

I have now been in remission for 30 months.

And I will be in treatment for the rest of my life.

Some days I wake up celebrating.

Some days I grieve for what I have lost.

Today is a sad day.

Tomorrow will be better. Or maybe the day after that.

i forgot an important one!

I read it last January and it still haunts me. The characters. The prose. The story. City Of Thieves by David Benioff manages to be devastatingly tragic, powerfully hopeful and sharply funny. It's on the list of my life-time favourites.

Please forgive the hyperbole.

I just can't believe I forgot this book when I wrote up yesterday's list. Set during the first world war and the siege of Leningrad, City of Thieves tells the story of a young Jewish man who, in order to save himself, must find eggs - to be used to make a wedding cake for an officer's daughter - during a time of famine. His companion on this quest is a worldly Russian soldier and aspiring writer. The two men encounter the best and worst of human character and become the most unlikely of friends.

This one is beautiful.

up to my eyeballs in print: my best of 2010

I read a lot of books last year. Seventy-one books, to be precise. And some of them were really big.

These are my favourites. These ten are the ones I think you should read, too.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel - winner of last year's Man Booker award. I found it slow going at first and then was completely swept up in the life of Thomas Cromwell and the intrigues of life in the court of King Henry the VIII. It's made me want to read a lot more about Henry and the folks who advised and served him.

An Abundance Of Katherines by John Green- my twelve year old rediscovered reading when he found John Green and he begged me to read this book. I reluctantly agreed, not having read much young adult ficiton (or YA, as the kids call it) and then went on to devour this novel and almost everything else this author has written.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan - the authors alternate the chapters in this book. The title refers to two high school students (one straight, one gay) named Will Grayson. The real star of the book, however, is a gay football player named Tiny who writes and directs a musical of his life story. I loved everything about this book.

The Erotic Engine: How Pornography has Powered Mass Communication, from Gutenberg to Google

by Patchen Barss - This work of non-fiction puts forward the theory that, from the beginning of humanity, pornography has driven technological change. The argument is very persuasively made but it was the author's writing that really captured me. I am not particularly interested in technology and not really interested in porn but I could not put this book down. I kept going back to re-read turns of phrase and often found myself laughing out loud. Several folks got this one for Christmas and I'm not done giving it away.

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen - This book has been out for a while but I read it with my book club this year. It was kind of a boring meeting because no one had anything critical to say about this beautiful story, told very well. I now want to read everything else the author has written.

Villa Triste by Lucretia Grindle - With a name like that, how could she not become a writer? This book is part murder mystery, part historical novel. I fell in love with the characters in this book and could not stop thinking about them when I had to put the  book down. Set in Italy during the second world war, the book tells the story of several women involved in the Resistance movement, whether by choice or out of necessity.

The Princess of Burundi: A Mystery by Kjell Eriksson - Steig Larsson was not the only Swedish writer. This book had been on my shelf for a few years and I'm not sure why I waited to read it. Darkly funny with a smart mystery and flawed, likeable characters this book held my interest from the very first page. Be warned, the book has little to do with Burundi and quite a bit to do with tropical fish.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger - Last summer, I finally found out what the fuss was about. I read this book on holiday, reading during quiet moments and listening to the audiobook when I was out for walks with my dog. It really is a beautiful love story that, in my opinion, never descends to the realm of the schmaltzy. And it stayed with me, which is impressive, given how quicly I read it.

The Devil's Company: A Novel by David Liss - Another brilliant, well-researched historical mystery from David Liss. I love the roguish Benjamin Weaver and the intelligent humour of all these novels. You could go back and start with A Conspiracy of Paper,the first Weaver novel but it really doesn't matter.

This year my goal is to read seventy-two novels (I don't watch a lot of television) and, since reading around here is a family affair, toying with the idea of a family book blog.

What do you say?

43 things (part three)

22. One day, when I was small, my aunt bought me a Buster Bar. Before I could eat it, it fell off the stick. She didn't buy me another one.

23 I had Dilly Bars instead of cake on my birthday this year. I ate two.

24. I also had a beer during the day on my birthday, something I consider very decadent. I usually only do this with my friends L. and K. (otherwise known as Sassymonkey).

25. The day after a social gathering, I spend a lot of time second guessing my behaviour, even when especially when I had a good time.

26. I feel guilty about something several times a day. Only recently did I discover that this is not a universal experience. I'm curious what it's like not to feel guilty.

27. My life in treatment is a constant tension between search for structure and then rebellion against self-imposed structures.

28. I have voted NDP in every provincial and federal election since I was old enough to vote (although I have sometimes done so while holding my nose).

29. This was the first year since 2007 that I didn't go to BlogHer. I'm OK with missing it (I had three great years there. The first was an amazing birthday present, the second I was a speaker and last year, I got to bring my book) but I'm a bit sad, especially since I finally feel like I figured out how to really enjoy the experience. There are lots of folks I would have liked to see (Average Jane and Nonlinear Girl were on a panel together. Whymommy was on a panel about blogs as an agent for change) and there are so many folks with whom I would like to spend more time.

30. When I was a teenager, I had a huge crush on the Cassidy brothers. I especially loved Shaun.

31. I was a hideously self-absorbed and narcissistic thirteen year old. It's amazing that my mother let me live.

haven't done this in a while

Haven't blown my own horn in at least a few weeks.

Alysa, who I met last year when she ran a wonderful workshop on writing your way through breast cancer (at the Living Beyond Breast Cancer conference for women living with metastatic breast cancer). I introduced myself and gave her my book.

Yesterday, Alysa emailed me to say that she'd written a review of my book for oncolink and that she thought it would make me smile.

It did.

not done yet reviewed for the cmaj

I have recovered from chemo but a week end at the Folk Festival and a night of insomnia have left me completely brain dead.

In lieu of any original content on my part, I wanted a share a wonderful review of Not Done Yet, published in this month's Canadian Medical Association Journal.

A physician who treats breast cancer patients might wonder what this blog-cum-book could offer a busy professional whose daily practice likely holds its own heartbreaking quota of Lauries...

However, Kingston’s book provides the detail and emotional shadings that give meaning to these stark, exterior facts. The honest telling of a singular story weaves the experience of cancer into the whole cloth of a life, reworked after a devastating rupture. She vividly integrates events and see-sawing emotions...

Comfortable in her lay-expert role and an inveterate listmaker, she draws from the negative encounters to compile pointers for health care professionals: "Don’t look horrified when I tell you I have metastatic breast cancer; … Don’t ask me questions about my treatment[s] that are irrelevant to the procedure being performed and/or outside your sphere of knowledge [p 190]"

The author of the review, Sharon Batt, is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Bioethics at Dalhousie University. She is also the author of the book, Patient No More: The Politics of Breast Cancer about her own experience.

Many thanks to my friend N. (herself the editor of Women Who Care - an upcoming book about "Canadian Women’s Personal and Professional Experiences of Health Care and Caring") for submitting my book to the CMAJ for review.

You can download the full pdf of the review here.

back and back

I am home after a lovely, packed extended week end away.

I also pulled something in my back getting my suitcase off the train as I arrived in Ottawa. It hurts.

I have a bunch of things I want to write about here (my week end, some thoughts on this whole book promoting business, two book reviews and a couple of other things) but today, I am too sore to sit still for long.

Maybe a gentle walk will help.

not done yet: sassymonkey's entirely unbiased review

I need to start with a little disclosure. Sassymonkey and I have become friends over the last few years and since she has moved to Ottawa, we have spent quite a few hours (we have our own little table at a bar in Little Italy), knitting and talking over pints.

This review really moved me.

"Laurie writes about life. There are times when the book will make you laugh, and other times where you’ll want to kick someone in the shins on her behalf. There are moments, both good and bad, that take your breathe away. Laurie shares the tough stuff but she also shares the soft side of her life, like the song by Daniel on May 8, 2007 that starts, “I love my mama and she is so beautiful.”...

...I’ve learned so much from Laurie, both from her blog and from reading her book. I have a hard time putting it in words but the best I can sum it up is this - she’s taught me more about living life with grace than I ever could have hoped to learn. Life isn’t about the big stuff. Life is lived in the in-between moments. It’s the walk to the library on chilly fall morning, the skate on the canal in the winter. It’s cooking dinner. It’s afternoons with friends. It’s pints and knitting and books."

I feel very honoured to have my work described in this way.

You can read the rest of the review, here.

not done yet on toddler planet

"Not Done Yet is one of the good things to come out of this new approach to living publicly, to letting the light shine in on troubles and illness, and it is a very good thing indeed."

Thank you, WhyMommy. I feel the same way about everything you write.

what i set out to do

PJ Hamel, had the following to say about my book, in a review she wrote for MyBreastCancerNetwork.Com (Health Central):

Wry. Real. Dealing with it. That’s Laurie’s story. It’s a personally familiar one, for so many of us. Through her week-by-week, sometimes day-by-day detailing of cancer treatment laid atop everyday life (the dog, the kids, school and work), we relive with Laurie those emotions many of us have experienced. And it’s a bittersweet feeling, this “been there, done that” comparison of radiation burns, telling your small son you have cancer, and losing your hair.

This isn’t a sad book. Nor is it a sicky-sweet, “Oh, cancer has been so good to me” book. It’s just… true. A regular woman dealing with cancer as best she can. And writing about it in an utterly compelling way.

This review made me really happy. It means a lot that PJ liked the book. She also made me feel like I achieved what I set out to do.

That's a really good feeling.

"not done yet" reviewed at "mothers with cancer"

Mary Beth Volpini kindly agreed to review my book for our group blog, Mothers With Cancer:

There were entries that I laughed while reading… Monday, July 3, 2006 as her boys pretended to be Wolverine. The most touching entry to me… Wednesday, October 10, 2007 Etching Myself in their Memories … spontaneous tears ran down my cheeks right there in the hair salon. I share those same haunting thoughts.

I am glad that I had the chance to learn more about Laurie. I applaud her courage, her creativity and her approach to life. “Metastatic cancer has not ended my life; it has just caused me to live my life differently.” If my story becomes more similar to Laurie’s, I hope I proceed with the same courage and positive outlook.

You can read the rest of the review here.

Mary Beth is an artist and you can see some of her work, at her personal blog.

"not done yet" reviewed

photo: L. Steer

"As a survivor, I appreciated her candor on everything from alternative practitioners who blamed her cancer on her negative body image to the way she describes a summer evening walk with a friend that ends with strawberries and whipped cream. The medical and the mundane knit together a complete picture of what it is to live with cancer that might be controlled but never cured."

- Lorri Steer, from her review of Not Done Yet on her blog, Terrible And Beautiful.

"not done yet" on blogher

For this blogger turned author, the BlogHer review of Not Done Yet was the among those for which I waited the most eagerly and with the most trepidation.

Denise Taunton, Community Manager (she also regularly blogs the Health and Wellness beat) was tasked with writing the review. Her post came out today:I am channelling Sally Field this evening.



"She (Denise Taunton, not Sally Field) likes me, she really likes me!" Or at least she really liked my book.

"I've read Not Just About Cancer for years and knew Laurie's story would make a compelling book, if she could only manage to pull the "right posts" and emotionally handle the process.

After reading the review copy of Not Done Yet, graciously sent to me by Laurie, I can say without reservation - she did it. She has written an excellent book."

You can read the rest of the review here.

I am thrilled (I celebrated with a glass of wine and a bubble bath, so forgive me if this is less than coherent).

Tomorrow, I am helping to escort 25 Grade Five students to the National Art Gallery. And I still haven't recovered from the week end (and literally running around with a sick 5 year old today). April is proving to be very, very busy. It feels so good to be able to complain about it.

how much popeye before he becomes pop-eyed?

D. is getting a day off after the long week end because of a cold, which has him good spirits but coughing a lot (he insists it's "not a day off when you're sick!").

He is currently watching back-to-back black and white Popeye episodes from the 1930s (he has seen these many, many times and loves them) and I probably should go be a parent.

Here's a link to post that the wonderful Blondie wrote about my book. It really, really moved me.

book review: "the widows of eastwick"*

I have a confession to make. Before The Widows of Eastwick, I had never read anything by John Updike (although, I did see the movie version of The Witches of Eastwick, which is sort of a prequel to this one. I'm not sure how faithful the movie was to the book. Given Hollywood's track record in this regard, I imagine the book and the movie were fairly different).

The Widows of Eastwick, picks up some 30 years after The Witches. As the title suggests, the three witches find themselves widowed, reconnect with each other and (after doing some travelling together) return to the earlier scene of their crimes. The mansion in which they partied as younger women has been turned into condos and they decide to rent one for the summer.

None of these women is very likeable, nor did I find it easy to relate to any of them (not sure if this was in part because I am so much younger - although I have read and enjoyed books with much older protagonists before). I did very much enjoy the writing, although I found that the dialogue was more an opportunity for the women to pronounce on the world, as opposed to really engaging with each other:

Jane looked aged in the harsh desert light, shrunken. Blue veins writhed on the backs of her hands. "There's this stink to the past," she said, "of magic that stopped working. It never really did work, of course. Just gave the priests more power than was good for them."

"If they believed it worked, maybe it did. It made them less anxious. As I remember us in Eastwick, we used to believe that there was an old religion, before men came in and took it over just as they took over midwifing and haute couture. It was a nature religion that never died - women carried it on even when they were tortured and killed."

The book is less about what is happening in the present and more about looking back to the past. The women are motivated by a desire to make amends for their crimes (causing the death, through witchcraft of a rival and of some other people who appear to have been thorns in their sides) and to relive their wild and powerful youth. The whole thing feels more like a padded short story than a full length novel. Some interesting things do happen but I found it hard to feel too interested.

As I was reading this book, I learned that Updike had died. I feel a bit guilty that I can't write a more positive review. I am very confident that this, the last of his novels, was not his best work by any stretch of the imagination. And perhaps I would be feeling less critical if I had read and enjoyed The Witches before reading this one.

Updike must have been grappling with cancer as he wrote this book and there is lots of talk of cancer throughout. The women killed their rival by giving her ovarian cancer and Alexa (one of the witches - the one played by Cher in the movie, I think) is obsessed with cancer.

I didn't hate this book. I just didn't really like it. I was expecting so much more.

Any Updike fans out there? How does this book compare to his other works? I would love to know.

*This is book was sent to me via Library Thing's Early Reviewer Program.

2008 in review: the books i read

We got back last night from a few days visiting family and friends in Toronto. I am happy but wiped out. I always feel this way after the holidays, a couple of weeks of over-indulgence, lots of socializing and the kids home all the time (although Grandma did take 5 year old D. home with her after Christmas. He got to spend a few days alone with his grandmother and T. and I got to SLEEP IN FOUR MORNINGS IN A ROW).

I also wrote and submitted the major assignment for the fiction writing course I've been taking - a 3,300 word outline of a novel (I am feeling very proud of myself but also a little daunted).

It was all great fun (at least most of the time) but didn't leave much time for review and introspection. So I hope you'll all bear with me as I engage in a little of both over the next few days.

I am starting with the easiest thing to review and the task that requires the fewest brain cells - a list of the books I read this year.

I set out to read 56 books, as part of the 888 Challenge. I ended up reading 65 books, which strikes me as unbelievable (and some of them were really big books). Then again, I didn't watch very much TV or knit that much this year. And I do have those days in bed after every chemo treatment.

My eight categories were: mysteries, non-fiction, memoir, Canadian, women authors, early review books and series. I won't bother to sort them by category here, as so many books could fit into more than one category.

The books here are all ones that I read from cover to cover. In general, if I finished a book it means that I liked it. The only time I forced myself to finish a book was when I had committed to review it. I already wrote about my favourite books as part of this book meme.

It is also worth noting that the majority (41) of these books came, at least initially from the public library, although I went on to buy some for myself and others to give as gifts.

I love to talk about books, so please feel free to ask me for more info about any of these. You can also find all the books I have been reading since the beginning of 2007 over at Library Thing. Let me know if I can find you there, too.

Here is the list, in no particular order:

White Corridor: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery by Christopher Fowler

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan (reviewed here)

Cloud of Bone by Bernice Morgan

Atonement by Ian McEwan

The Girls by Lori Lansens

The Retreat by David Bergen (reviewed here)

Friend of the Devil by Peter Robinson

Tenderness Of Wolves by Stef Penney

Before and After Getting Your Puppy: The Positive Approach to Raising a Happy, Healthy, and Well-Behaved Dog by Dr. Ian Dunbar

The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Escape from Amsterdam by Barrie Sherwood (reviewed here)

Body Surfing: A Novel by Anita Shreve

Death Message by Mark Billingham

SOUS LES VENTS DE NEPTUNE (Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand) by Fred Vargas

Artists Way 10th Anniversary Edition by Julia Cameron

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers

The Book Of Negroes by Lawrence Hill (published as Someone Knows My Name outside Canada)

Belly of the Whale by Linda Merlino (Reviewed here)

The Whiskey Rebels: A Novel by David Liss (Reviewed here)

Beneath the Bleeding by Val McDermid

Malice Aforethought by Francis Isles

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off: The Yarn Harlot's Guide to the Land of Knitting by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

My Mother's Daughter: A Memoir by Rona Maynard

Radiance by Shaena Lambert

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

The Chameleon's Shadow by Minette Walters

Looking Down by Frances Fyfield

The Lemur by Benjamin Black (reviewed here)

Too Hot To Handle by Mary Jane Maffini

Things I Learned From Knitting (Whether I Wanted To or Not) by Stephanie Pearl McPhee

Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block by Judith Matloff (reviewed here)

Life Mask by Emma Donoghue

Inheritance Of Loss by Kiran Desai

Unravelled by Robyn Harding

The Deceived by Brett Battles (reviewed here)

Lethal Intent by Quintin Jardine

T Is For Trespass by Sue Grafton

The South Beach Diet by Arthur Agatston (reviewed here)

The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper

Bones to Ashes: A Novel by Kathy Reichs

Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens

The Queen of Sleepy Eye by Patti Hill (reviewed here)

The Ghost by Robert Harris

Run by Ann Patchett

Dying to Sin by Stephen Booth

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg

Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines: Patterns, Stories, Pictures, True Confessions, Tricky Bits, Whole New Worlds, and Familiar Ones, Too by Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne

Dream Chasers by Barbara Fradkin

The Outlander by Gil Adamson

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves

Hell Bent: A Brady Coyne Novel by William G. Tapply (reviewed here)

The Cleaner by Brett Battles

The Ethical Assassin: A Novel by David Liss

No Such Creature by Giles Blunt (reviewed here)

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

Affinity by Sarah Waters

Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland (reviewed here)

Cold In Hand by John Harvey

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez

This took up way too much time. It's now Wednesday, two days later than when I started and I have had chemo in between.

I hope somebody finds this to be of at least a little interest.

Maybe I'll go read a book now.