Diary
Partial Remission
After the last appointment (June 2016), my oncologist doubled the time between scans to once every six months from every three. Almost five years later, I’ve progressed, it
Summer Diary: Father’s Day
Today I found myself purging the files from the research I did for What They Saved. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, but today I
Is Waiting Also Living?
We wait in our chairs to hear our name called. Some in wheel chairs, Others with carers, canes, oxygen tanks, or neck braces. Soon my turn. —Elizabeth Bishop,
Cancer Gadfly: Still Alive, or The Mortifications of Survival
Readers of the London Review of Books will know that Jenny Diski has been writing diary posts about her cancer for over a year. In “Who’ll be last?”
Losing Friends
I don’t love Facebook, even though I’ve used it, abjectly, to promote my last book. Beyond the obvious embarrassment of self-exposure, the most anxiety-producing feature of the Facebook
Chemo Brain
Most define it as a decrease in mental “sharpness”—being unable to remember certain things and having trouble finishing tasks or learning new skills. When it starts, how long
Cancer Gadfly: Limbo
After a series of stable scans, and almost 4 years of monthly chemo, last week my cancer treatment was abruptly cancelled. No doctors, nurses, blood draws, or infusions,
“Roberta liked Flavia… they shared a tennis court” (apologies to Virginia Woolf)
I can’t have been the only viewer of the U.S. Open women’s final, who teared up at the sight of the two competitors, Roberta and Flavia, embracing each
Welcome. Some musings on my current preoccupations with the worlds of illness and the worlds of books, the vicissitudes of living with cancer and the need now, in my eighties, to imagine what new writing might be.