Category: cancer

California, cancer, exercise, health

Beautiful: Walking for Cancer

Christa Avampato
Edie Littlefield Sundby

Sometimes the simplest actions that we do for ourselves and for others have the biggest impact. Yesterday The New York Times ran a story by Edie Littlefield Sundby, a woman who walked 800 miles from San Diego to Sonoma after she fought cancer for 6 years.

It was a grueling physical challenge done over several months with a lot of emotional support from friends and family. And she had never felt more alive, confident, and hopeful for the future. All it took was the determination to get up and out into the world. Sometimes the very best thing we can do when we feel stuck is to summon the will to move.

Click here to read the full article.

cancer, charity, children, cooking, design, food, philanthropy

Cupcakes for a Cause

Christa Avampato

That delightful time of year has arrived again: the leaves are changing, the air is crisp, and we can stuff our faces with the sweet, yummy goodness of cupcakes while doing some good in the world. The annual celebration of Cupcakes for a Cause kicked off today to benefit Cancercare for Kids. For the remainder of this week you can help the organization by picking up the goods at local bakeries around the country, all conveniently listed by state on the causes’s website.

Watching your diet? No problem. For every e-cupcake you send through the site, $1 will be donated to the charity, up to a cap of $10,000. You have some controlled functionality to design your own virtual cupcake or choose from a selection of beautiful stock designs. I’ve been happily sending them out this evening to family and friends and it’s almost as much fun as baking them myself.

So what are you waiting for? No time like the present to gobble up some cupcake goodness and help a worthwhile charity, all in one delicious bite.

books, cancer, child, children, health, Randy Pausch

Meet Randy Pausch

Christa Avampato

If you haven’t heard of Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, you need to. Via his book (just released this week), his blog charting his fight against pancreatic cancer, and his You Tube videos, he is by every measure a man of great character, charisma, and strength. He will inspire you to squeeze every last drop out of life; his story will make you grateful for your health, your family, your friends, and your work.

Shortly after being diagnosed, Dr. Pausch gave what he called “The Last Lecture”, which is also the title of his recent book. With such little time left in his life, he wants to spend as much of it with his family as possible and he was worried that the task of writing a book about the lecture would consume too much of his energy. As with all worthy projects, if there’s a will, there’s a creative solution to get it done. Dr. Pausch literally spoke the lecture and the story behind it to his collaborator, Jeff Zaslow, on 53 one-hour bike rides. He rides his bike daily to keep himself in the best shape possible.

“The Last Lecture” is a 75 minute talk that dispenses the wisdom he’s gained that he wishes he had time to pass on to his children. The subtitle is “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. To date, 10 million people have logged on to watch the video on You Tube and through the Carnegie Mellon site. Join them!

Lecture on the CMU site: www.cmu.edu/randyslecture
A recent article in the New York Times Health section about Dr. Pausch:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/health/08well.html?em&ex=1207886400&en=227dcc7269e91cb6&ei=5087%0A
You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
Randy’s blog: http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html
Buy the book: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/1401323251/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208265354&sr=8-1

cancer, happiness, Robin Roberts, story

Making sense of a mess

Christa Avampato

There are many antecdotes that people use to comfort themselves or those they care about when something in their world goes wrong. “You’ve got to turn lemons into lemonade.” “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” “It’s a character builder.”

I was watching the news a few nights ago and Robin Roberts from Good Morning America was getting her head shaved because her hair was falling out from chemotherapy. They showed a clip of an interview with her asking her why she would subject herself to something like that on national television. And she simply said, “Because my mother taught me to make my mess my message.” So much more more powerful than making lemonade or building character.

Making your mess your message actually gives you something to do with what’s wrong with your life at the moment. That can mean cancer, a broken relationship, a lost job. You can scoop up your sorrows, however many there, however intensely they make you feel, and put them to work. And it helps you get through it, connects you to other people going through a similar situation, and helps them pull through too.
cancer, experience, family, health, mother

Quick Conversations

Christa Avampato

Why does a burning platform need to emerge before we adopt change? I wish it didn’t take life altering events to help me get my priorities in order. I wish I could always find what Alec Horniman, one of my professors, calls “a clearly perceived better way.”

I am always amazed how the shortest conversations have the most incredible impacts. I spoke to my mother recently and the conversation went something like this:
“Well, I’m glad everything’s going well.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’m going to run into Mellow Mushroom to play trivia and eat some pizza.”
“Okay. I just wanted to tell you one more thing…..They found some abnormal cells in my mammogram.”
“Are they going to test them to find out what is abnormal about them?”
“They already know what “It” is.”
(Long pause)
“Are you telling me you have breast cancer?”
“That’s what “It” is.”

I capitalize “It” here for a reason – I have a lot of respect for cancer, for its power to change how we look at the world. I can’t think of a six letter word that has ever had a more immediate effect on me. There have only been a handful of situations that have truly altered the way I perceive my future – 3 to be exact. This one tops the list.

I blinked, and my life was different. In that moment, I had no words despite my usual gift of gab. My only thought was, “I want my life to go back to the way it was less than a minute ago.” I know now that it never will.

Yes, I will worry more. Though I idolize mother for her strength and courage, I am forced to recognize that she is not immortal. However, I have found that there are many more good things than bad that come from this situation. I will be more grateful for time with my mother. I will criticize less and praise more. I will forgive and forget in a way that I have never been able to before. I will be even more conscious of how short life is, of how important it is to do what I love everyday – in both my personal and professional life.

I have set a record for the number of times I have apologized to friends and family for not returning their calls or emails more quickly. My excuse is always, “I just don’t have time.” In actuality, I do have time. We all have time; we just make choices about on what and on whom to spend it.

It is as if my life has permanently found a home under a magnifying glass – everything, the good and the bad, are amplified. The highs higher and the lows lower. Maybe this is better than simply existing in a world that is even-keeled. Those highs and lows do make the game more interesting.

My friends have been incredibly supportive, and I am very grateful for them. Their obvious first question is always, “Is your mom going to be okay?” Usually I answer, “I hope so.” The other answer, the one that’s almost always impossible to articulate is, “I don’t know.” Truthfully, we never know. From one moment to the next, life twists and turns in ways we never expect, and often does so at break-neck speed. I blinked, and my life was different. And that’s not always bad. Things that don’t scare you to death will scare you to life.