scifiknitter

A new sweater came off of my needles and onto my back, and I’m happy to report that I was able to finish this one in early December, in time to actually be used this winter. I started this sweater last summer when my vision was deteriorating day by day due to rapid onset cataracts. One day I could no longer knit socks because the stitches were too small for me to see well, and I needed a project using larger yarn on larger needles. I kept trying the sweater on as I knit it and it seemed awfully snug, but denial was on full display as I kept telling myself everything would be OK - “It will block out to size.” Ha! Those famous words have doomed many a knitting project to failure. After I had knit approximately half of the sleeves, denial no longer worked. They were so snug, I could see my skin through the stitches. So I ripped back half of a sweater to the beginning, and cast on again, this time two sizes larger to accommodate both a gauge discrepancy and my need for (...

Another two-part series, this time looking at what it's like to be in a clinical trial. The first part covers some basic information about clinical trials in general: what are the different types of clinical trials? What do they require? Who pays for them? What It's Like to Be in a Lung Cancer Clinical Trial - Part One, Background Information The second part describes my experience in a phase II trial for an experimental drug. I have talked  about this trial in a previous post on this blog, but this piece has been freshly written. What It's Like to Be in a Lung Cancer Clinical Trial - Part Two, The Clovis Pharmaceuticals Phase II Trial for CO-1686

The weight of a lifetime's accumulation of stuff may seem especially heavy when you realize in your gut that your life is finite - and that someone else is going to have to deal with all that stuff some day if you don't. This post has been one of my most popular at the Free to Breathe patient support site. Sorting Out the Stuff After a Lung Cancer Diagnosis

I see both a very smart general oncologist who practices at a local cancer center and a very smart research oncologist who practices at a major cancer research hospital. I talk about why in this post. Why I Have Two Oncologists