Legally Me

So this is what being 21 is like....

I hosted the Friday night meal here in my tiny matchbox apartment for my family -15 people in total- l'kavod the book and my birthday. It was lots of fun and all order was kept at the expense of my sanity. Just joking mother- please come again! The ice cream cake was heavenly, (thanks to Sprinkles of Boro Park) and you have half a tray of leftovers in my freezer....

The next part of becoming 21 was getting stuck in that splendid display of thunder and lightening we had this morning- oh yes, and also the rain. My little JB refused to take the stroller today so we were both caught in the rain and soaked, him in his new outfit and shoes and me in my freshly washed sheitel that was supposed to make me look good for Wednesdays' signing. But JB had so much fun splashing in the puddles that I stripped him down to his striped undershirt and let him live and enjoy his toddler hood...until we got back home...

Then came the presents. The presents that remind me that I am no longer a teenager, but a (young) woman about to take on life... and allowed to legally drink...okay, well Vitamin Water is the most I drink, but its nice to know I can if I wanted to.

Soon comes my new diver's license in the mail- to replace the one I've been hiding away in my wallet for three years because it has "UNDER 21" printed right near that ugly picture of me.

Also comes the excitement of having published my own book, and the nervousness about putting it out there and becoming a voice representing people in my situation. I never meant to be anything but an author, but this year, being 21, might teach me a few things I might not yet know about myself.

Along with my new age comes the honor and challenge of standing behind my upcoming book- the honor to acknowledge the praise and the challenge of facing opposition from those who think I am too young and naive and too nervy to have a real opinion on life.

Turning 21 is a big deal for me, it means that I have 21 years of experience behind me, with 21 years worth of friends and family and blog readers along with me, and the world at large recognizing me as an adult. Now the last part of being 21 is to recognize myself that way and know that I am ready for whatever my 22nd year will bring me.

Can I be 21 and still be a little stinker?

Starting Something Big

Okay cyber-readers, I need your help.

With all the publicity that I'm trying to do for my book, I got a very unexpected call from a good friend of my father's.

This is man who lost a son to cancer years ago, and feels strongly about my book getting out there to help other patients laugh and see the brighter side of things.

He offered to buy $500 worth of books to be given to patients, and then he said that if ArtScroll would offer him a discount he'd give another hundred. ArtScroll said they'd definitely do a discount for people wanting to donate books.

Another pal of my fathers loved the idea and also pledged $100.

Now we're all thinking about spreading the word and trying to raise money to get my book out to hospitals and to Jewish patients and their families free of charge. It does mean money though.

We are trying to raise (for starters) like $1200 which will give us about 80 books to work with. 80 books doesnt sound like an awful lot, but having been on the other side, I will tell you that if someone had given me a humorous book about my situation when I was sick, it would have meant the world.

We are hoping my book will mean the world to 80 patients out there- maybe more.

Will anyone care to join the quest?

Proper Invite...

The Face Behind the Blog

Okay readers! You've been following me for a while now and this week you got to finally hear my voice. One reader- "Blueberry" commented that my voice sounds the same as my writing- like a 12 year old. I told her that my face looks the same too.

Now my face is going public with a book signing at Eichler's in Boro Park next week Wedesday.

I'll be on the Nachum Segal show in the morning and then from 6:30 to 8:00 pm I will be signing copies of Miracle Ride to buyers in Eichler's.

ArtScroll has done up a stunning email invite to the book signing but I can't figure out how to get it onto the blog- oh well. I still have lots to learn.:-)

I believe they are offering a %20 off the list price of my book- so there you have another reason to come and meet me. :-)

I'm really really nervous but soooo excited! I hope to see some of you there! I'll bring JB too...if he behaves...

Archive of Gavriel Sanders Show

For those of you who missed my late night interview with Gavriel Sanders, here is where you can listen to it:

For streaming online: Click HERE

For downloading to MP3 or computer: Click HERE

Tell me what you think!

Check it Out!

Click HERE to go to ArtScroll's website where you can already preorder a copy!

New book news!

Hey everyone! Newest update on my book...

I was interviewed by Gavriel Sanders for his radio show. The show airs Sunday nights at midnight on WSNR AM 620 NYC. There will most likely be archives of the interview for those of you who don't want to stay up that late :-)

Got to www.gavrielsanders.com for the archives if you miss it!

I will have another interview IY"H with Nachum Segal, Wedesday, June 4, at 8:30 am. The show plays on 91.1 FM WFMU. I can imagine there will be an archive of the interview too on his site: www.nachumsegal.com

Let me know if you hear me on the radio! I'll be going under the name Tzipi Caton...

Whoa!

From having nothing to say a week ago, I'm revved up to write right now!

The book is REAL. It's ALIVE! And it's coming your way! The people at ArtScroll called me yesterday morning to finalize the cover and to tell me that the book will be on shelves the first week in June. I am still catching my breath. Those guys work fast!

http://www.artscroll.com/Books/mirh.html That's the link to ArtScroll's page on my book and you can order the book there and actually preorder it now.

I got a call this morning about talking on the radio together with my doctor to promote this book and I'm really thrilled! I'm already picking out my wardrobe for when I go on the Oprah Winfrey show. ;-)

The people over at ArtScroll are making it sound like this book is going to be huge and I'm still kind of in shock. I never expected something I wrote to keep me sane at age 16 to become a national bestseller. This is too good to be true!

There will IY"H be a link on this page where you can buy the book directly from the blog, but for now ArtSCroll's website is the only place you can preorder it.

Amazon.com will also carry the book, and it has a glossary in the back that explains all the Jewish terms so that the book can go to a much larger reader base.

The description of the book on the website I posted is so beautiful, I'm really excited to hold a copy of my own and see it for real.

My students are all planning to buy a copy and have me autograph it for graduation. :-) One of my students today pointed out how so much good was coming out of a very bad illness and I felt like hugging her because that's kind of the whole point of my book- to show how much good can come out of anything Hashem gives us.

I plan on keeping the site open and updating you with the radio shows and the fame and glory and stuffs and of course with all the other cancer rants. Now that I'm going public there are sure to be many more stories to share.

My little JB is going to be famous but he's too little to care. Right now he got himself stuck into my cleaning bucket, so I need to take a break from fame and get him out.

Updates to follow more often now!

Updates

Okay! I'm here!

The book is really moving! They called me today from ArtScroll to finalize some minor little details that had to get done, and the actual printing is within the next week or two. That means that by this summer you can see the book on shelves! I'm so excited!

The title has been changed to "Miracle Ride" even though I liked "Riding Backwards" better. There will be a subtitle on the cover to give a little insight to the book and so far we came up with "Fighting a Tumor with a Dose of Humor". I thought that was a good subtitle, but ArtScroll still needs to approve.

The cover art isn't done yet, it's in the process of being created, but printing can happen before the cover is done so I dont care much. I need ideas for a good cover, but I trust ArtScroll has ideas of their own. After all, they're in the business a lot longer than I am!

There are two forewords and two afterwords in the book. My doctor and my mother have each written a foreword, and my friend (another survivor) and myself have written the afterwords. Well my aftweword is more like a thank you page, but its worth reading cause it's funny. I am not about to drop my unique style even for a boring acknowlegements page.

My students are so excited with this book- they are learning so much from the process of what it takes to write and edit and print. I should publish a book every year! My classes all deserve this experience.

My doctor actually called to talk to me about the book and he's really excited about it too. He felt that this is something that no one has covered yet in the market and he feels that this might be good for all patients to read- not just the Jewish ones.

He laughed about all thos incidents that he remembered me getting into, and said that there were a lot of times where I cried or was serious that he never would have guessed felt. He thought it was something that could show people out there that its possible to see things in a good way but its okay to cry too. I'm so happy that he thinks highly of the book.

Other than that he asked me if I would mind talking to a new patient of his who also has Hodgkin's. She's a little down about the whole thing and he thought it would be good for her to see me and hear my point of view. I said yes right away, but I'm kind of shy and nervous.

Anything else about the book? Oh, yeah. I went and gave a class to a seventh grade last week about what it's like to be an author. The teacher is my niece and she took advantage of me by asking me to fill up her lesson. I had a great time pretending to be this amazing author, and then it hit me, like, "Hey! I AM an author!" Feels good!

Pretty much that's what I have to write for now and I'll keep posting as my book gets closer to being published...

Thanks for reading!

I'm Still Breathing....

New post to be up shortly.. lots of stressers now, but life to return to normal within a few days. Sorry "amazing", be right with ya!

Condition: Un-Covered!

You would think that after almost 5 years I'd have nothing more to say on the issue of getting treated for cancer. Alas, that is not the case.

Treatments may be over but my lasting effects are far from gone. We're not talking lasting effects as far as my health goes, I'm talking about the lasting effect cancer had on my Insurance coverage.

My insurance has been a mess ever since I was first diagnosed. My insurance cancelled on my as I was taken in to the emergency room for the first time. They said I wasn't covered outside of New York and they cancelled me on the spot.

I was changed over to another provider that same night but my parents paid much more because I had a pre-existing condition. The company didn't want to cover half my scans and tests and my mother used to spend hours on the phone fighting the charges.

When I got married my husband and I went on the same plan and it's still a fortune cos of my condition. They refuse to pay anything unless I personally call them and tell them that under so and so clause of so and so law in my contract, they had to cover me.

And let's not forget about the co-pays!!! I went to the pharmcay to pick up a perscription and realized that the co pay was more than the actual medicine! I offered to pay for it myself- I need this insurance like a hole in the head.

My husband is into the idea of getting each of us a life insurance policy- of course, he's been trying to get one on me for a long time but these companies charge a fortune to insure someone with a pre-existing condition.

If I have to go to yet another life insurance company and take yet another blood test and EKG and urine sample, I will sue them all.

This week I find out that I am no longer on any insurance plan. The one I was on with my husband is up for renewal and we just found out that the payroll we had been on cut us off six months ago.

Being on a company's payroll list is so that we could apply for insurance with a group and that makes it cheaper cos the companies assume that if you are on payroll you are well enough to work and that makes is much less likely that they will ever have to shell out money for you.

So now that we have to renew our policy we have to show that we are on payroll but because we are not anymore and we were never notified that we were being cut off, we cannot renew our policy and we can't get COBRA cos we would have had to apply for that as soon as we were cut off.

So now I need to go for checkups in one month and if I don't get onto an insurance plan within 20 days I will have to apply for insurance as a brand new patient which means that they can reject me or raise my rates for my pre-existing condition yet again.

This is EXACTLY what I need erev Pesach!

The Pictures

This is the most exciting thing that happened this Purim. My JB became a Mommy and helped me cook for Shabbos :-)

Too Excited for Words!

Okay, I owe it to whomever is still coming back to check my blog....

You might have noticed (and if you didn't, I'll tell you now) that all posts up until and including the one where I got married to BK are gone. Don't worry, I didn't delete them, I just put them in storage.

Reason being; I signed contract on the book.

I'm very excited about it and a little nervous too. This was and still is my dream, to publish something of my own. To see my work on the shelves in the bookstores and say, "Hey, that's MINE!!" It would be soo cool to pick one up in front of my students and say, "Look! I don't make you write for nothing! I write too! I'm a writer!!!"

It's also a dream of mine to help spread the awareness of what it is like to be sick. So many people are doing tremendous chessed in our communities and lots more would love to join, but they don't know much about what they are getting into. I hope my book can help.

This is my dream, and I am taking my fragile hopes and putting them into the hands of the readers. I am putting everything I have into this book and everything I have into you! I am hoping that my dreams catch on and that others find them as inspiring (or at least enjoyable)as I do.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to spill all my secrets, but I'm guessing it's a form of advertising so my publisher can't get too mad at me.

The book is tentatively titled "Riding Backward" and will be around 220 pages.

It's a better read than the blog because it was tweaked a million times by me, ten million times by my mother, mother in law, my sister in law and my nieces, another couple of times by my friends and then some more by my students (who by the way are gaining so much from going through an actual writing, editing and publishing process).

It also has lots more in it than the blog does- some more details, a new character, some actual names (instead of just annoying initials) and some other secrets.

I'm working on getting my Doctor to write a foreword and my friend, a fellow survivor said she's writing one too. I'm so excited.

I came very close to not doing the book at all though. I had a lot of hashkafic issues to begin with and didn't feel like it was worth bothering to fix them just to publish for such a small market.

I worked with an editor friend who told me to take another opinion by ArtScroll and see what they found wrong with the book, and then decide. Well, ArtScroll decided for me, and that's where you'll be seeing my book IY"H.

I'm not going to spill the publishing date now because it's not final, but I'll let you know when it gets closer.

I'll thank everyone that needs to be thanked when I get to writing my acknowledgments for the book, but for now I'd like to thank my blog readers who pushed my site counter up high enough to convince me that maybe I had something worth putting into hardcover.

Funny, for being too Excited for Words, I sure said an awful lot...

Yes! I'm Sick!

This was written by a friend of mine who is SICK of being sick! Well, she isn't sick anymore- She's getting her port out this week B"H! But this is what she wrote about how she feels about the last few months.

YES, I AM SICK!!!
Yes, I am sick of…your “concern”
Yes, I am sick of…your selfishness
Yes, I am sick of…your nosiness
Yes, I am sick of…your stupidity
Yes, I am sick of…your tactless and constant phone calls
Yes, I am sick of…your visits
Yes, I am sick of…your wants-how about mine?
Yes, I am sick of…your chessed and mitzvos
Yes, I am sick of…you talking about me
Yes, I am sick of…your pity
Yes, I am sick of…the pity in your eyes
Yes, I am sick of…your mouth
Yes, I am sick of…the attention
Yes, I am sick of…your fishing expeditions
Yes, I am sick of…your interrogations
Yes, I am sick of…your harassment
Yes, I am sick of…your lies
Yes, I am sick of…my new best friends
Yes, I am sick of…your presents and letters
Yes, I am sick of…your fakeness
Yes, I am sick of…your “friendship”
Yes, I am sick of…the tension
Yes, I am sick of…being told what to do
Yes, I am sick of…being stared at
Yes, I am sick of…being examined
Yes, I am sick of…being self conscious
Yes, I am sick of…the do’s and don’ts

Yes, I am sick of…my tears
Yes, I am sick of…my sleepless nights

Yes, I am sick of…waking up early
Yes, I am sick of…wearing a wig
Yes, I am sick of…taking pills
Yes, I am sick of… being pricked
Yes, I am sick of…chemo and radiation
Yes, I am sick of…doctors and nurses

Yes, I am sick of…Memorial Sloan Kettering
Yes, I am sick of…being part of the Chessed organizations- of them
Coming over to me, talking to me, of their pushiness to do that they want me to do!

Yes, I am sick, I don't need you to tell me all this,
I only want your help in getting better.

Part of the Club

Fine Chossid- You got me out of hibernation.

I went to a wedding last month of a good friend who is part of "the club". This friend is someone I talk to (or text/email) at least a couple of times every day. We have both been through cancer, both have had our scares and experiences with this, but they never come up in our conversations.

We are both normal people today. Absolutely fine and functioning and happy people. We both teach, and we both kvetch about our school days together, and we complain about piles of laundry, cooking suppers, and prices of shoes. We laugh at stuff together too. We laugh at how she got locked in the bathroom for an hour until someone heard her yelling and came to save her, and at the silly things my son does, and at how much we kvetch.

We met through our common denominator- the "club", but stayed friends because we have so much else in common.

At her wedding, I met another club member who actually was the one to first introduce me to the "club" when I first got sick. She was two years younger than I was but had already finished her treatment and was growing her hair nice and curly when she introduced me to some other kids in the group.

We were really excited to see each other again, and after catching up, she introduced me to some of the Kallah's friends that I didn't know. Most of them were fellow club members. I was shocked at how many of us there were.

She then brought me over to another friend of hers and I asked "Oh, is she in the club too?" And my curly haired friend laughed and said she belonged to another club.

So now, shmoozing with the not-so-new kallah, and talking about her wedding and all the club members I met there, she told me that our curly haired friend had said that I asked about her other friend in that "other" club.

She had said it as a joke. There is no other club...But really, I think there is.

For a long time I forgot what it was to think outside the box. I thought that cancer was all there was. And now, the closer I get to remission and the further I get from treatment, I am in a way, growing up.

I will never forget my bout with cancer- but suddenly, I hear things that I realize are much worse. Some of my friends are having hard pregnancies, one of my friends is going through a divorce, another has a sick child. We're all young kids, and so many are going through so much. How did I ever think I had the monopoly on the keys to the club?

I talked it over with my friend and she said that no matter what, cancer still gets a much bigger reaction from people than say, a divorce. I must admit she is right. Even I, who have been there and done that, get a lot more stressed about a person with an illness over a person with another kind of struggle.

But I'm not right. There is no such thing as a single club- I think in some way everybody belongs to some size shape or form of the "club".

Not only that, I feel that my time as a member of the club is slowly fading. Even though I strongly identify with everyone there, I know that I see myself as an alumni of the club- an honorary member. I feel that even my own club is not really mine anymore.

I love being there for people who want and need it, but sometimes I feel so guilty. Who gave me the permission to do that? Who gave me permission to name myself part of this club?

I think I realized that today I'm part of another club. I'm part of the club that has been there and is still there for others, but glad to be out of there herself. It's like the club was a hole and now I'm on the top of it, helping people out. I feel guilty sometimes - as if I'm only shouting inspiring things into the abyss but not really there with them, but today I realized that I don't need to be. Others need me to be in my NEW club- at the top, ready and waiting to lend a hand to someone needing to be pulled out of the dark.

So I'm proud to start my new club. And all my friends who were in my old one are more than welcome to join! There's no president or anything, we're all the same- here to celebrate being here and there to get as many people from that club into this one!

And a special mazal tov to my latest out of the last club member- mazal tov on finishing radiation and on IY"H getting that Port out! You're almost there!

Doctor Nerves

It's so weird. You would think that someone like me who went through all I did with doctors and cancer and everything would have no problem going for a routine checkup.Alas, such is not the case.

I had three separate doctor's visits in the last month and each was an ordeal. They were all regular not scary visits, just yearly checkups and normal scans and whatnot, but the planning and nerves that went into all that made it seem almost like I was taking chemo the next day.

Of course, blood tests don't scare me and once I'm in the examining room nothing bothers me anymore, it's just the bundle of nerves until I get there.

I wonder, am I crazy? Are there other survivors out there who also get pre doctor visits nerves? I don't slee the night before, cant eat in the morning, wake up early and stress big time.

Anyone out there? Or am I the only sane one???

Miracles

Tonight is JB's birthday. My son is one year old. He just had his first big birthday party in where he was dressed in a brand new outfit, wore a hat, ate ice cream cake, pulled off his hat, mushed his cake into his outift, threw up on the floor and then mushed it all into the tiny fluff of hair he has.

He cried at the end of it when it was way past his bedtime, and then on coming home, refused to go to bed.

Now, in his favorite jammies, JB is on my lap, holding his helium balloons and watching me type my newest (long overdue) post.

I remember a year ago when I left my sister's wedding to meet my new baby. (Yes, she had her anniversary party tonight too!) He was so small and soft when I first held him, and I cried along with his first wail. He had just as little hair as he has now and we knew right away who he looked like and then changed our minds a thousand times until the bris and then a million times until today.

He's the baby that came after chemo, after all the worries, after the old chapter in my life; he is the new one. He's the baby that's my special miracle.

And then I look at my sister's baby. Her baby is just as small (okay, he's an 8 pounder, but you know...) just as soft, and cries much louder. (He also has more hair...) They also decided he looks just like his father, (but they aren't changing their minds about that a million times....) and you know what? He is no less a miracle than my son is.

So he wasn't born after cancer, and he was born to two baruch Hashem healthy parents almost a year to their wedding, and so he didn't come with all the worries. But just like JB, he comes with all the nachas, the joy, the excitement, and the sleepless nights.

I don't think my sister sees her son any differently than I see mine. Some people say I need to appreciate JB more than others need to for their kids, and while I see what they are saying, I don't agree. I don't think that JB came with more nissim than anyone else. I think that others need to see how even a regular, uncomplicated birth is just as special as mine.

Miracles are miracles and it doesn't matter when they happen or to whom they happen to or after what or why. I think the most important part of miracles are to realize that they happen even in the quietest of ways and that we need to keep our eyes open to find them and to be grateful.

For my JB who has just fallen asleep and is still holding tightly to his balloons, I wish him the best of everything always. I'm not good at giving brachos; I never know what to say, but I do know what I feel and I hope that JB gets everything I want for him and even more.

I know that JB is the one getting the presents tonight, but if he only knew that I get a bigger one every single day when I get to kiss him and hold him... You think he's young enough to feel jealous???

Old Kvetch

Old Kvetch is a new reader who just left me a comment on my last post.

The comment was too funny and is so along the lines of the next post I planned to write, that I'm using it instead...

Old Kvetch, hope you don't mind, and thanks!!!

I just stumbled across your blog and have only begun to read some of what you have written so please accept my apology if you've already covered the following topics:

The "my uncle had an even worse problem blah blah blah blah' visitor who seems to think you'd enjoy hearing about a stranger's problem of fourteen years ago while you’re trying to get your mind around everything you must face right now. Somehow, knowing that someone I never met had a different illness in a different part of the body at a different time of their life and was treated with technology as closely related to state of the art medical care today as blood-letting, and mustard plaster and wearing fresh garlic around my neck is supposed to be uplifting.

The visitor who assures you in response to a set back and bleak prognosis c"v that 'eh, doctors, they don't know what they are talking about' (usually followed by an uncle story). Somehow that is supposed to make you feel better about the DOCTOR who is either going to explore your insides or invade (hopefully the correct) parts of your body with radiation or chemo.

DON’T even think of getting me started about the newly rediscovered best friend you haven't seen since kindergarten (and you never liked back then either because he was always trying to sell you the second 'half' of his sandwich, which just happened to be the crust) who shows up with a pitiful gift to make you feel guilty about not buying the alternative medicine product he drove 14 hours from Pittsburgh (without stopping!) to show you as soon as he heard you were sick, without mentioning that he happens to sell it for the Amway equivalent of junk science and even bought a $300.00 supply for you while driving (14 hours non-stop!) FROM PITTSBURGH! (could you pay me back in cash? I don't have a bank account right now) where he had gone to save the life of a yogurt farmer who LIVES on this miracle cure and has survived every illness from male pattern baldness (by rubbing it on his scalp which he has prepped by soaking it all night in cultured organic orange juice) to cancer in every major organ of the body (non of which the doctors could diagnose because they are in a conspiracy with Lyndon LaRouche, Merck, the FDA, Dick Cheney and Big Oil) all caused by his drinking a can of Splenda-sweetend diet soda while standing under the path of a Concord jet on a day he forgot to wrap his head with an extra layer of aluminum foil, all by ingesting copius dosages of the Original, Genuine, ProFauxFlaxiodtrated (unadulterated, of course) which the FDA has been preventing his uncle (the one who survived something worse than you have by staying away from tap water and now showers in WalMart Naturally Desalinated Spring Water - do you think you could help us raise money for him so he can shower in it four times a day like a mequbal he met on a secret flight to Bagdad to daven at the kever avraham avinu would have been buried in if Iraq had been Eretz Yisroel told him to?) from distributing so it is only sold in health food stores (and kept under the counter next to Dr. Marvel's Marvelous Midlife Malitated Midrif Melter that Oprah was censored for when she was this-close to bringing on her show because ABC is secretly owned by a French company that manufactures blood pressure medication that no one would need if they all lost 50 lbs.! They've been using it in Europe for 40 YEARS!) and (take a breath, you sound like you WALKED from Pittsburgh!) dropped everything to drive 14 hours in the other direction to pick up for you at the only surviving retailer selling this stuff because all the others were rounded up and shipped to a secret air-force base in Wyoming (which they have to disguise as an old hippie commune every four years when the national media looks up Wyoming on the map to report on the outcome of the presidential primaries, in which all three voter participate).

SEE! You got me started!

Stay tuned next week for the next episode of "The Chizuk I Could Live Without" in which the adult child of your grandfathers great uncle Mutchkeh' youngest daughter's music teacher's cleaning lady's landlord (in Brownsville. Isn't it just terrible what the goyim did to that neighborhood? I remember when you could walk there at three o'clock in the morning, but your too young, you wouldn't remember, ah kids today what do they know!) offers (threatens) to drive you to all your doctor appointments (by the way, you think maybe can we use your car? I don't have plates on mine right now because my license was suspended a few years ago because I didn't have insurance which I couldn't afford any more after some anti-semit cop wrote me 27 tickets, one for each red light I ran one purim. What did he want anyway? I knew it was no good to drive after so many drinks so I was trying to get home and stop driving as soon as possible and anyway the red light should only be for cars on the street, not the ones on the sidewalk, right?)

I'm so Excited!

After a few months being insanely busy writing my blog into a book, I finally handed in the rough draft to a publisher!

I'm really excited, but so nervous. This is where all my hard work gets torn apart and nitpicked by a bunch of people who see it as business and not as a piece of my heart. I'm nervous but in a good way. I know it's going to be a long process to publish, but I can't wait to get this out.

I'm a little worried about what the reception will be with this as a book and not just some random blog. I hope readers will like it just like people seem to be enjoying my blog so far.

I'm a little afraid to put such a personal thing out there to the real public where my name will be displayed on bookshelves in Judaica stores and where random unknown people will be able to talk about my experiences and actions without even knowing who I am first.

I know I am likely to be judged and criticised, but I still think that my diary should be out there for the people who will grow and learn and get chizuk and even a good laugh out of it.

I don't even know why I'm posting now; things are so premature- the book probably won't be out until sukkos anyway. I guess I just need the support of my readers right now... :-)

Eventually I'm going to have to shut my previous posts- all the ones from 2003 and 2004 because no one would buy the book if its all online. I feel bad about doing that because the original purpose of this blog was to give chizuk to those who needed it and I feel stupid taking a profit from people who I could be helping for free, but thats they way things work in publishing.

Sorry for warbling, but like I said, I'm nervous!!!

Blurt Poem

Okay, rushing out to work, but I just finished the poem I meant for my friend. Mind you, she hasn't seen it yet, so I'm hoping she can keep off my blog until tonight when I have a chance to deliver it!

When you’re feeling down and kinda sicky
And life seems like it’s very icky,
And you greet visitors halfhearted
And they say things that are retarded.

Just think of Blurt!

The game where people shout and scream
And don’t know what they really mean
And are busy yelling themselves blue,
Not bothering to listen to you!

It’s the game of Blurt!

When the nausea from chemo totally gets you
And it seems like normal people just forget you
And when the callers just invade your space
And you feel like yelling them into place

Just think of Blurt!

The game where players get ahead
As they switch places in the other’s stead
And try to figure out the definition’s word
And you wonder if the question was actually heard

It’s the game of Blurt!

When you feel like no one hears you
Because the people who come near you
Make you feel like a forgotten item on a shelf
Because they came thinking about themselves

Just think of Blurt!

The game where it’s about YOU winning
And where the thinking stops right at the beginning
Like when chesed people come to call
and dont know what they are doing at all!

Its the game of Blurt!

When people talk without using their brains
And Blurt! out things that sound insane
Just laugh and try to join the fun
And then you’ll end the game before everyone

Just think of Blurt!

Where players don’t know what cancer is like
And try to do good, though it don’t come out right
And I guess you’re doing a mitzvah just to let them
And then they finally leave and you can forget them!

It’s the game of Blurt!

I know that Blurtiing is not your speed,
But you need to think that they’re in need
They need to feel good about who they are,
And use you to do chessed and maybe get far

Just think of Blurt!

But in the end you come out the winner
(C’mon Chemo makes us sick kids so much thinner!!)
And the other players think they won too,
It’s really all up to you!

It’s the game of Blurt!