Documentary On Ordinary Women and Breast Cancer

Ordinary women not only are fighting breast cancer, they are dealing with life which throws them quite a few lemons re cancer (no insurance, no social supports, no information on choices…)all of you ordinary, courageous women who are celebrities in your own right who are dealing with cancer from diagnosis to healing to transformation or whatever your pathways are.

Muriella’s Corner would like to invite you from wherever you are, to begin to contribute to the project. The aim is to collect your stories and testimonials and provide them to Larry King or Dr Sanjay Gupta of CNN or to the Oprah Show. We need to create another face of cancer which people never see and could only imagine.

Our suggestions on submitting the comments follow:

Your name or pseudonym (somewhat like a userid which portrays feeling or location in dealing with the disease like - scaredoutofmyunderwear or onwardandupward

Year of diagnosis

Time of diagnosis (morning, noon, evening)

Place of diagnosis

Immediate reaction ( e.g. shock, why me, sky becoming very dark, cold hands, cold feet, crying out loud, crying silently, were you alone, with friend(s), with family…)

What followed (decision to talk about it , decision not to talk about it, curse my husband, curse my children, curse the pets, pray, nervous laughter…)

How did you manage the sequential process*(handed everything over to the doctor, ran scared out of the room, bawled, went to a bar and drank, had somber thoughts of suicide, went to a church/temple/mosque and prayed…)

*The sequential process is what followed after your initial reaction and the decisions you made or the decisions that were made for you. This is really where the meat of the information comes to the fore:

Decision to have mastectomy/lumpectomy/other/do nothing

Decision to have chemotherapy/radiation/other/do nothing

Decision to decide later what decisions to take

Any pressure felt and from where (without, within…)

Feelings after decision made

Roadblocks along the decision pathway (complications of other diseases hidden, fright/fear all the way, weight loss, weight gain, depression, calm, seeing the light, recognizing that there is more to do and more to life…)

Any other comments would be welcome.