Sometimes we need to tilt at windmills... and let the universe perhaps reveal the value at some later date.
Image credit: brianscott on Flickr
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As we have done on every July 1st since 2002... and probably will do for every July 1st in the years ahead.
You see, today is Canada Day and our 10-year old daughter was born in Canada during the 5 years that we lived in Ottawa, Ontario. Through the beauty of the great relationship between the USA and Canada, she is both a US and Canadian citizen.
So today we proudly flew the Canadian flag to honor our daughter, to honor her birthplace and to honor all the friends we made up there. At something like 5:30am she was softly singing "O, Canada" and we all joined her in singing renditions of the tune multiple times during the day. (In English only, of course, as none of us know French well enough to do that verse, although our daughter is learning French in her school.)
This we all do gladly for her.
Tomorrow, the Stars and Strips will be back on the flagpole... for another 364 days...
Happy Canada Day to all our friends living up north of us... and to our daughter!
P.S. And I hope that any of you celebrating today up North did get a chance to have a beavertail, some poutine, or at least a double-double or some timbits from Timmy's, eh?
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"I have some bad news. You have cancer."
He may have said it differently... but that was the core message. Simple. Direct. To the point.
And everything changed for us.
The rest of that appointment and indeed the year has become a blur of learning more about cancer, medicine and the medical system than I ever expected to learn at this age.
My wife, who at the time was in the best physical shape she'd ever been in, proceeded down a path where she lost her breasts, lost her mane of hair, lost parts of her memory, lost her stamina, lost her ability to quickly process things in her mind, lost her physical health... and basically lost a year of her life.
The good news, of course, is that she didn't lose her life, and that as a result of the treatments she's undergoing and the fact that they caught the cancer early, she's got a very strong chance of being around for many more years. Her cancer was "only" Stage 1 Invasive Breast Cancer, and could have been so much worse had it not been detected.
Intellectually, that's easy to say. Emotionally, it's a lot harder. It's been a hell of a year.
And the journey is not over. She's still got another 7 months of Herceptin treatments... and another 4 years after that of daily Tamoxifen pills (that she is also taking now), both of which have their own troubling side effects. And as we've learned, you're never really "cured" of cancer. You win battles, but the war inside your body continues.
A year ago, the big C invaded our life and became a thoroughly unwelcome houseguest. Now we just have to continue learning to live with it...
Some of the articles I've written about our journey with cancer, in chronological order:
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Expect to see some outstanding curling happening this week!
More on the story:
A local Philadelphia country music station also seems to have helped produce a video with interviews and shots of what is going on there:
Looks like fun, and if you are in the Philadelphia area, this is your chance to get to see some of the best curlers in the nation!
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The pain of her treatment is that felt by at least 1 in 8 women during their lifetime. Her scars on her chest are like those of my wife and so many other women for whom the "cure" involved radical changes to their bodies.
Her sense of betrayal is that of so many women.
It's not that the Susan G. Komen For The Cure organization can't choose who it wants to fund based on ideological/political reasons. It can. That is a perfectly valid way to run an organization and to choose who to fund.
But that's not what people signed up for.
It's not what they donated money for.
It's not what they ran or walked races for.
They donated/ran/walked/volunteered... FOR THE CURE.
There was never an asterisk on the "cure".
It was never "for the cure as long as said cure meets our ideological/political guidelines".
It was for the cure. Period. Full stop.
Perhaps it was naive to believe that no politics were involved, but people believed in the story of the Susan G. Komen For The Cure organization. They completely empathized with Nancy Brinker founding the organization based on a promise to her sister who died of breast cancer. They believed in the story. They supported the organization with their time, money and energy. They made the Komen organization the amazingly powerful force that that is today.
It was for the cure. Period. Full stop.
But then Komen completely mishandled communicating the Planned Parenthood issue and made it far worse with a disastrous interview with Andrea Mitchell that raised many more questions than it answered.
Sure, the Komen Board eventually reversed its position, which was pretty much guaranteed to satisfy almost no one. And certainly many people may be pleased at the departure of Komen VP Karen Handel.
But Komen has a far larger problem.
The proverbial curtain has been pulled back and Komen supporters are learning more about the organization that they have supported.
They are learning of the political activities of the organization's leaders. They are learning about other instances, such as the ending of funding to organizations that supported embryonic stem cell research, even though no Komen funding apparently went directly to such research and the Komen organization had in fact trumpeted the potential of such research back in 2006. A statement about this topic on November 30, 2011, was apparently posted to the Komen website but subsequently removed.
Regardless of how you may personally feel about embryonic stem cell research and whether you think it is should be pursued or whether you think it should be outlawed, this is another example of the politicization of Komen's grant-making.
It was for the cure. Period. Full stop. Never with an asterisk.
And more questions are being raised about Komen's methods, their choices, their staffing... and, well, pretty much everything about the organization.
And while there can be no doubt that the Komen organization has done a tremendous amount of work for breast cancer education and research (just look at the last few pages of their 2010 Form 990 to see all the many grants they've given), the question many of us (including my wife and I, who have been definite Komen supporters during my wife's ongoing fight with breast cancer) are now asking is:
Are they the right organization to whom to donate?Can we trust Komen's leaders to truly put the "cure" above their personal politics?
Are there better organizations where we should focus our time, dollars and energy? Can our dollars be more effective going to organizations directly involved with research?
How do we find a cure for breast cancer? Or at least better tools than the sledgehammers we have today?
Komen's now lost the trust of the Linda's of the world who believed so strongly in the mission and purpose of the organization. Can they regain that trust? Maybe. Maybe not.
It was for the cure. Period. Full stop. Never with an asterisk.
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In her ongoing fight against breast cancer, my wife ended four months of chemotherapy with her last treatment back on December 6, 2011. She's thoroughly enjoyed having several weeks without any kind of treatments. Her hair is very slowly starting to re-appear and she's been feeling overall pretty good.
Today begins the next course of treatment. She is starting one year of receiving a drug called Herceptin. Her breast cancer tumor was found to be "HER2/neu positive" and the theory goes that the antibody in this drug will help reduce the chances of recurrence of her cancer. Every three weeks for the next year, she'll be coming in to the cancer center for a couple of hours to get an intravenous infusion.
Herceptin is NOT chemotherapy and the side effects are expected to be minimal. Perhaps just some fatigue for a couple of days. (And, oh, yeah, there are potential cardiac issues that need to be monitored... :-( )
And then assuming all goes well, in 3 weeks she will start five years of a daily pill of Tamoxifen an anti-estrogen hormone treatment that will effectively be trying to starve any remaining cancer cells that need estrogen to grow. All sorts of lovely potential side effects to that including many of the effects of menopause (ex. hot flashes, mood changes), memory loss/fuzziness, and even increased risk of other cancers.
Not fun.
As we've gone through this process, I admit to feeling that as far as we have come with research into breast cancer (and we HAVE come a long way), we still have such a long way to go.
The treatments we have today are like a series of sledgehammers, each trying to do what it can to beat the cancer cells down. Your treatment seems to be:
Wham... wham... wham... wham... blow after blow after blow after blow in an attempt to kill off any cancer cells in the body and reduce the risk of recurrence.
All the while with the frustrating reality that there might not be ANY cancer cells in your body right now!
Now, the treatments are getting better. Instead of big, massive sledgehammers that are applied to every woman, the treatments today are perhaps smaller sledgehammers that can be targeted a bit more. There are tests that can determine whether some treatments are appropriate - or not - for people. (Something I wrote about before.)
Still, though, the treatments seem to be pretty heavy-hitting.
We need the mystical "scanners" of sci-fi shows that can scan a body and confirm the existence of cancer cells to see if any of this is really necessary.
We need even better drug options that can target specific cancer cells more like scalpels instead of sledgehammers.
We need the "nano-machines" of sci-fi that can travel through the blood and find and kill cancer cells.
We need more refined and targeted weapons in this ongoing war on cancer.
And I know we WILL have improved weapons over time...
Meanwhile it's hard to argue with the odds of using the existing treatments. According to the tests on my wife's tumor and based on various studies, there was a 60% chance that she'd be cancer-free after 10 years if she did no further treatments beyond the removal of the tumor.
Add chemotherapy... add Herceptin... add Tamoxifen... add all that together and statistically her chance of being cancer-free after 10 years is now up in the 90s percentage-wise. Maybe 92% or 93%.
60% vs 92%
Not a hard decision to make, even with all the side effects.
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Following on the tradition I've started over the past couple of years (2011, 2010) after enjoying Chris Brogan's take on this, here are my three words for 2012. They aren't goals, per se, or resolutions, but more just three words to guide my actions through the year.
In our age of distraction, it's insanely easy to lose focus and suddenly find yourself hours later not having accomplished anything you set out to do. It's an inherent challenge for those of us who are by nature bright-shiny-object chasers and whose job involves being on the edge of communication technologies...
Over the past six months or so I've been taking some very deliberate steps to reduce distractions and give me more time to focus.
I've reduced or eliminated many of the notifications on my computer. I've gone to checking email only at certain times of the day. I've blocked off time in my schedule where I just shut down all social media, IM, and email and just work on specific tasks. Friends would not recognize my desk these days because it is CLEAN... as I've worked on simplifying the distractions in my home office.
Still, these are just steps... and one of the areas I want to work on in 2012 is really bringing some discipline to this and trying to focus more on what is important to get done. (Oh, look, there's a butterfly.....)
There are two aspects to this word for me. First, due primarily to the unwelcome intruder in our life in 2011, I have a great queue of projects, both online and offline, that I want to work on in 2012. Naturally I have a l...o...n...g... queue of blog posts I'd like to clear out. I need to update my Migrating Applications to IPv6 book. I really MUST reboot the VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) this year. There are some health issues I've put on hold that I need to address. There's a lot that was put on the proverbial back-burner... and I need to clear out that queue a good bit. There are a great many stories still left untold.
The second aspect of "queue" is that this year I really want to focus on maintaining a healthy queue of blog posts that are scheduled out in advance. Each week I'd like to be lining up some posts for the next week. Certainly there will be posts written in the moment to respond to other posts or to recent events... but I want to keep a schedule queue going so that my content is appearing regularly throughout the year. You do not need to hit the Publish button right now... and I want to work on that this year.
Finally, I've made some lifestyle changes over the past year... I've made a job change which also has brought some changes... I'm looking in 2012 at how to find a bit more of that ever-elusive "balance" between work and personal life. Beyond all that I do at work and online, I'm also a father of two daughters, a husband to a wonderful woman, a son, a brother, a friend, a community member... and many other roles.
This past year has once again reminded me of the incredible importance of all of that.
The challenge, of course, is that when you absolutely love what you do... when "work" is not a chore as much as almost "play"... well... it's hard to shut down the brain sometimes and let it go. Something I've always struggled with... to give that marvelous gift of being truly present with those around you.
So while I've made some changes in 2011, there's definitely further I can go...
Those are my "words" for 2012... we'll see how the year goes. What are you going to focus on this year?
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Well, to start with, they - and most all my plans for 2011 - were rather subsumed by an extremely unwelcome fourth word that dominated my year:
CANCER
Yes, indeed, the defining thread of 2011 has definitely been my wife's diagnosis and subsequent battle with breast cancer. It truly did consume the entire year - she had what was otherwise a routine doctor visit in January that started raising questions... and then her last chemo treatment was in early December.
In between, of course, were horrific months dealing with tests leading to the diagnosis in May, then the operation in July with the long recovery, and then the pathology reports of invasive breast cancer and then the start of chemotherapy in September and all the nastiness that followed.
She's not "done" now... next month she begins five years of a daily hormone therapy called Tamoxifen as well as one year of an every-three-week infusion of a drug called Herceptin.
But in theory we're through the worst of it. We hope.
So looking at 2011 through the cancer-colored lens, just surviving was a beautiful thing... but how did I do with the words that were to guide my activities? Let's see...
My big goal was to increase the amount of actual writing I was doing across my blogs and other sites. Unfortunately I don't have a count for 2010 to know how my writing exactly compares, but I know that I did write more this year. My total was:
Given that I was manually tracking all those entries across several different blogging platforms, it could certainly be off to a certain degree... but it's probably in the general area. Through the first half of the year I was writing more and averaging out about 2 to 3 posts each day. I had aimed to get at least one post out every day of 2011, but that goal feel by the wayside in March and then with all the cancer happenings it never really became a goal again.
Still, I'm pleased with a good body of work out there for 2011. Some of it shorter content... some of it the longer, deeper pieces I love to write. There's still a ton of stories left untold that are sitting in my queue... but I did get a good bit out.
Add to that, I believe, 51 podcast contributions to For Immediate Release. I seem to recall Shel & Neville taking one show off... and I don't think I missed any of the weeks. (And if they didn't take a week off this year, then it was 52 contributions.)
Plus, I published another book, this time with O'Reilly, "Migrating Applications to IPv6". The idea was that this was to be primarily an "ebook" that could then be frequently updated... which, given everything else going on, didn't happen (updates), despite my best of intentions. I'm looking forward to making some updates in 2012.
Where I had hoped to do more in 2011 was with photography and videos. My camera traveled with me a good bit... and I shot lots of photos... I just didn't have a whole lot of the curation/post-production time to then get photos online. 2012! Ditto video.
I made some progress on this... I haven't really publicized it yet, but I've been aggregating my content from across various blogs into a new site at:
danyork.me
It's my attempt to bring together all my content into one central site. There's still much I would like to do with that and it's still not working the way I want, but it's a start.
I never did move my main blogs off of TypePad... perhaps 2012 will be the year I finally make that happen. And I still would like to improve how this site (DanYork.com) presents me...
This is one where I did make serious progress. I had wondered a year ago if running would be something I really continued.
In fact, I ran 5 miles yesterday morning and will probably go for a similar run tomorrow. (Today's a resting day.) Over the course of 2011 I probably ran 400 or 500 miles... hard to know exactly as I'm not tracking all my running (such as on the treadmill).
I also ran in 6 actual races, including my first-ever half-marathon in September.
2011 also marked the time when I brought my running gear with me on every business trip and speaking engagement - and actually RAN!
Wellllll... except for the trip to Orlando where I left my shorts back in New Hampshire! On every other trip (including multiple trips to Orlando), I managed to get out and run at least once if not more. New York... Miami Beach... Toronto... San Francisco... Orlando... Virginia... Austin... I was quite pleased with this, actually, because it's so easy NOT to run while traveling.
So yes, running has become part and parcel of who I am.
Outside of running, there were some other lifestyle changes, too. Some tweaking of what we eat. Trying to do some more of the offline things I enjoy. Adding curling back into my life. Continuing to try to find that balance between the work I love and the family I love... The sudden job change from Voxeo to the Internet Society also brought some lifestyle changes, too.
Outside of the cancer chaos, or perhaps because of the chaos making me think more about priorities, 2011 was definitely one of thinking about - and acting on - lifestyle changes.
More changes to come, I hope, but this was a big part of 2011.
What's on tap for my 3 Words for 2012? Well... I'll write about that soon... ;-)
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