Yes, I know that these days it’s cheaper to buy finished clothing than to buy cloth and sew a dress yourself. But I bought a sewing machine.

Compounding the horror, I also bought a waffle iron.

Waffle irons are frivolous. Ridiculous. One more thing to lug around. And what’s wrong with pancakes?

Despite all that, I bought a waffle iron. And I’ve been gardening. Hauling dirt. Planting bulbs. I kill almost everything I plant, but that’s beside the point. I’m trying.

Perhaps my 2001 diagnosis of ovarian cancer is to blame? Brain damage from the chemo? Or is it something deeper?

There’s a lot of talk about PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in military circles, but very little in cancer circles.

At first you just try to survive, and that takes up almost all the room in your heart and mind. If you make it to the end of treatment, and the holy grail of remission, the oncologist smiles and shoos you out the door with the words: Go live your life.

Then you’re in the parking lot, blinking at the sun. What now?…

[read my entire “She the People” column at The Washington Post: The healing path of dresses and waffles]

In addition to writing cards to her son, Gant made a 20-minute video in which she rages against the FDA for not allowing compassionate use of the drug Pertuzumab.

In February drug maker Roche announced that Pertuzumab was given priority review by FDA precisely because of its promising effect on HER2-positive breast cancer.

A phase III clinical trial revealed that metastatic breast cancer patients increased their progression-free survival from 12.4 months to 18.5 months longer when Pertuzumab was combined with two other chemotherapy drugs, Herceptin and docetaxel.

However, the earliest date Pertuzumab would become available is June 8, 2012. Gant knows where she stands, and she’s trying her best to parent from “the beyond.”…

[read my entire “She the People” column at The Washington Post: Dying mom makes breast cancer video, begs the FDA to have a heart]

But they should have known. If Twitter and Facebook can bring down military dictators in North Africa, after all, even as established and connected a charity as Komen is relatively small potatoes.

Does it even matter that Komen has no relationship to the pink gun that surfaced on the Internet? The fact that people had no trouble believing they were linked tells you how big their PR problem is.

I’m an ovarian cancer survivor, and have never been a Komen fan. The whole “pinktober” phenomenon lost me at the pink buckets of fried chicken.

Let’s just say the entire hot mess of pink marketing was a giant turnoff for me…

[read my entire “She the People” column at The Washington Post: Komen, Go Back to Your Roots]

According to results of two international clinical trials, published last week, the drug Avastin (aka bevacizumab) can interfere with blood vessel growth, and thereby slow disease progression in ovarian cancer patients.

For three months. Three and a half, actually…

Read the entire post at Washington Post: Ovarian cancer drug fail (and that’s the good news?)