Tag: depression

Do You Have Chemobrain?

Sometimes when I am giving a speech and am embarking on the subject of fatigue, I’ll ask the audience members to raise their hand if they are not tired. Usually not more than one or two hands go up. People laugh in that “ah ha” sort of way, and I imagine that they are thinking,…

Passing it On: Life Does Return to Normal After Cancer

In her book, Passing it On, Susan G. Baker describes in the afterword how a routine check-up turned into a summer of suffering and soul-searching as she faced one of the greatest challenges of her life: ovarian cancer. I interviewed Susan as the wife of former Secretary of State James A. Baker III prepared to…

Tomorrow’s Pain

It was the size of the needle that made the biggest impression on me. Cindy Sanderson, a clinical psychologist in her mid-40s, was delivering a lecture to the psychiatry service of the cancer hospital where I was training. She didn’t offer the usual research on this or that psychiatric issue; instead, Sanderson described coping with…