Alcohol and Breast Cancer...Just Say No

http://ww5.komen.org/Content.aspx?id=6442453108&ecid=emklapr11:5

Full disclosure. In high school and college I drank a lot. Lots of beer and wine. Lots of parties. These are particularly risky years because girls' breasts are developing and teens and young adults binge drink today more than ever before. I was one of them. I now don't drink at all. I miss a little wine, trust me. But I have not really had a drink since being diagnosed on September 28, 2009. Giving it up was easy during chemo because your mouth has that metallic taste. And once it was clear of my system and I was drinking tons of water and eating good whole foods, frankly whenever I have had a sip since it just doesn't do it for me. In fact, it just slows me down and makes me feel sluggish and full of toxins. If you have teenage girls explain to them that drinking could lead to breast cancer (see above statistics) and if you have been diagnosed and want to stay in remission, don't drink. It's that simple. Trust me, no one enjoyed wine and champagne more than me but I really don't miss it one bit. I drink bubbly water with a splash of cranberry and a lime when I am out and frankly if you put it in a wine glass it is really a great cocktail party alternative. Just say no!

Depression and Breast Cancer

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/03/30/dreaded-d-word/#

This is by my friend Noreen Fraser, who has raised more than $100 million for cancer research. She founded StandUp to Cancer and is currently living with Stage 4 breast cancer. She has a weekly blog on FoxNews.com. Read on...

DEFCON 3

Greg and I were the guest of KT McFarland on Fox's internet show DEFCON3. KT served on the NSC during the Reagan administration and is heading out to Afghanistan next week to see what is going on in that forgotten war.

Check this out if you have a chance. Some asked me if we celebrated after my surgery last year and we found out that the cancer was gone. Now that the book has been written and launched, I feel like we can finally take a breath and enjoy this victory lap.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4616989/this-burning-land

On Greta tonight

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/index.html#/v/4615022/this-burning-land/?playlist_id=86925

Trailer for "This Burning Land"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moA58PYVR1g

Whirlwind

I had spent the week covering Operation Odyssey Dawn, only to have to come up with Operation Family Airlift when it became apparent that the launch of our book, "This Burning Land," would fall at exactly the same moment that Amelia was supposed to compete in the Maryland State championships for gymnastics. Somehow I reached Aunt Barb - she flew in from Boston. My 88 year old grandparents, just back from a safari in Kenya, drove up through the snow from Charlottesville and Memommy, Amelia's great grandmother and Barb went to Columbia, Maryland. Throughout the reading Aunt Barb texted us Amelia's scores: 9.55 on the vault, another 9.55 on the floor. The rest of the family joined us at Politics and Prose in DC where we had our first book reading. Greta Van Susteren took time away from preparing for a tribute to Geraldine Ferraro to stop by as did half a dozen dear journalist friends who had served in Israel and the Palestinian territories with us during the "Intifada Years." The kicker for me was when Zoe Matza, Michael and Linda's daughter who was just Annalise's age when we were all racing to suicide bombings and West Bank incursions came up to us at the end of the line to have her book signed. She is now a freshman at GW University in DC. Then the after party at Sarah Williams (friend since 5th grade) and Peter Mali's beautifully renovated home nearby was exquisite with food catered from Lebanese Taverna and a lot of friends who had all lived through some crazy times together. Another text from Aunt Barb: Amelia finished 3rd in the State! It was a housewarming for the Mali home. Greg was eloquent and since this book is really his baby more than anything, I couldn't have been prouder. Of course, it ended in tears when Sarah gave me a gift as we were leaving: a glass vase that my father had given to Sarah and Peter at their first house warming when they first moved in and he was gearing up for a bone marrow transplant. She told me she thought of him every time she saw it and wanted me to have it. My Dad would have loved today. I'm so glad I didn't miss it.

The "New" Normal

Every cancer survivor tells you that the year after treatment you have to get used to the "new normal."
So what's normal? Is it normal to wake up one morning after a sleepless night wedged between your two year old son who is still holding onto a dozen helium balloons above your king size bed because he wants to be like the boy in "Up" (and it's his birthday so you let him.) Or is it normal that you roll over on the Tonka truck that he brought to bed that night, or that you can't really move because there's a needy cockapoo cradled in the crook of your bent knees as you try to lie in the fetal position. You think curling up on your side might allow you to get a good night's sleep, except your unforgiving newly implanted breasts feel like the Jean-Paul Gautier cones Madonna wore in her "Vogue" concert tour circa 1990. On the one hand, you can't really feel your breasts anymore - I imagine it is somewhat akin to the false limb feel of any amputation. On the other hand, they hurt and they don't squish and you can't do "swan" on your stomach during Pilates because you have these two unforgiving mounds across your chest that still ache from the surgery weeks after the fact.

My new normal one particular Sunday morning included an incontinent cockapoo who woke me for yet another dash down my Hugh Newell Jacobsen stark wooden staircase to the back door with stiff joints and ankles that don't bend in the morning thanks to 17 rounds of chemotherapy. Is it normal that two weeks after my final breast reconstruction, a surgery that was about as fast as a stop at a McDonald's drive-thru and did not allow for me to stay overnight in the hospital - is it normal that my valentine on February 14, just days after I had my drains removed from my own surgery, was to be sitting in an orthopedic vet's office in Springfield, Virginia across from an Outback being told that Izzy, my three year old cockapoo would need double knee replacement surgery because she was born with a genetic defect common to little dogs? Is it normal that in the waiting room there was a very elaborate board listing all of the dog specialists including radiation oncologists, neurosurgeons and cardiologists and that it was fancier than the waiting room at Georgetown's Lombardi comprehensive cancer center.

It was perfectly normal to burst into tears as the orthopedic vet, whose name happened to be Dr. Griffin, explained that the usual recovery would be 8 - 12 weeks during which Izzy would need to be immobilized so that she didn't run, dash or jump and reinsure her new bionic knees. Of course, she would not be able to climb stairs or go out to the bathroom on her own. She would need to be carried everywhere. She would need constant supervision and if we did both knees at once it would only cost me $6500, a discount for doing both at the same time. I called Greg in tears. He, exhausted coming off the overnight and thinking that he was ahead of the game this Valentine's having stopped at Safeway on the way home, to pick up a dozen roses - I explained years before the difference between store bought roses and carnations and he hadn't made that mistake since, say, Moscow. All Greg wanted was to crawl into our unmade bed and get some sleep. He thought he was off the hook that morning until I called crying from the vet's office. In his stupor he agreed I should leave Izzy to get the surgery. We both knew there never was going to be a good time to take care of this. I sobbed as I handed Izzy to Dr. Griffin. I felt like I was abandoning her to be put to sleep - she looked at me quizzically not knowing why I was leaving her or that she would be saddled with the hard plastic "cone of shame" for two weeks while her stitches healed. I couldn't look at the check-in nurse as I left the animal hospital. She would have thought someone had died. My only hope was that they would keep her as long as possible because I had no idea how we were going to immobilize her once she came home or protect her from a rowdy 2 year old, whose new favorite phrase because it gets a rise out of us is "Izzy shut-up." I had no idea how I was going to carry my 10 pound dog around when my own doctor's orders were not to carry anything heavier than a pound of flour for the next few weeks. Remember my surgery was less than 2 weeks earlier and I still had my own stitches to contend with.

That afternoon, Valentine's Day, Greg and I had already made plans to go visit our old friend Joao Silva at Walter Reed. Joao was one of the photographers whom we used to run around the townships with when we were young and foolish in South Africa. He and his band of brothers - 3 other war photographers have been immortalized in the book and now upcoming film, "The Bang Bang Club" starring Ryan Philippe. One of them killed himself after taking the iconic photo of a vulture next to a starving child in Sudan, another was shot and killed in the townships just before the end of apartheid and a third suffered months of guilt and anguish after winning a Pulitzer for taking a series of photos of a man being "necklaced", burned to death with a gas filled tire placed around his body in the townships as apartheid was ending. Joao stepped on a landmine in Afghanistan last November and lost both his legs. But he didn't lose his sense of humor or his fierce, infectious love of living and photographing the world's tragedies. In fact the Sunday Times, a South African newspaper for which he once worked, had tried to take him off the township beat. They thought that all the dead bodies and violence was getting to him. They sent him out one Sunday to take pictures in Joburg's Zoo Park. On a sunny day surrounded by manicured lawns, Joao gravitated to a wobbly duck that was clearly not well. That Sunday Joao convinced his photo editor to run a series entitled "Going…going…gone" as he captured the last moment of the duck's life. He was reassigned back to the townships and has been photographing the horrors of war ever since.

Greg and I found Joao sitting in his hospital bed surrounded by stacks of books and magazines seated in a bed that had been his home for the past 3 months. He detailed dozens of surgeries. On either side of him in Ward 32 were soldiers who had lost limbs in Afghanistan, poster children for the signature wound of these post- 9/11 land wars. Joao doesn't think of himself as a "Wounded Warrior" and he won't let you compare him to one. He says those 18 year old boys have their whole life ahead of them and they don't know if anyone is going to love them. He had a life. He has a wife and kids and he will get back on his prosthetic legs and probably win another Pulitzer. As we sat there my cellphone rang. It was a shrill ring and I dove to answer it because I knew it might be the vet. In a moment as surreal as any from the last few months, I stood in the corridor of Walter Reed outside the room of my friend who had had both his legs amputated to hear about my cockapoo. Reassured that she had pulled through her surgery alright. I told Joao what the phone call was about and he laughed. He still had a sense of humor and not an ounce of self-pity. He was the same Joao Silva sitting with an elfish grin and wicked sense of humor atop his hospital bed and both Greg and I walked out of his room feeling that there are certain spirits that just can't be contained. Legs or no legs, Joao did not feel sorry for himself and he already had big plans for what he was going to do when he got out of the hospital, even though that would likely be another 11 months.

I went home and got the kids and went to Petco and did what any rational person would do under the circumstances - bought Izzy a large crate, a bunch of toys and a Snuggie made for small dogs. We were all ready for when she came home from the hospital. And I wasn't even on painkillers. Luke played in the crate for a while when we got home. He looked like Hansel through the wire grate. The girls slept with Izzy's new toys and blanket so that she would smell us and feel secure when she returned and found herself not sleeping in the crook of my bent knees but instead immobilized in her new crate - the Gulfstream of dog crates I might add.

She slept there a total of two nights. I couldn't take the crying. It was like having an infant. I was so excited to get back to work after two weeks off to "recuperate" from my surgery. I desperately needed to get some rest.

My greatest luxury these days is to find a few minutes to write blog entries, which as you can see from the gaps in posting is not all that often. Usually after the kids go to bed. I am most productive between 10:30 and midnight. And I always jump out of my skin each night when I am seated at the dining room table, my MacBook open and a voice that sounds like it could be something out of "Twilight" says in a haunted, distorted baritone: "It's 11 o'clock…" Annalise set my computer so that it does this every hour that it is open. She recorded her voice to tell me the time. It makes me jump out of my skin every night as I sit alone downstairs with Izzy wrapped around my feet.

I guess this is the new normal. It doesn't include a lot of sleep, but it's just whacky enough to make me realize that everyday I move one step further away from having cancer be my sole focus.

Izzy got her stitches out and has the knees of a one year old. Between her knees and my bionic breasts, we are ready for just about anything.

I am so glad to be back to normal.

GOOP

Why did my mom and Andrea Wilson send me this blog from Gwyneth Paltrow on the same day (my sister Caitlin it turns out had sent it to me the week before)? Are they trying to tell me something? If you are juggling a lot right now...read on.

http://goop.com/newsletter/112/en/

Organic skincare...from South Africa

This is a great organic skincare line that I have been using for the past 6 months - started by my friend Gretchen Peters' sister, Jenny who is in South Africa. It's a new line and uses only natural ingredients. Skin is an organ so you may want to switch to organic from whatever you are using. I love Savane. It reminds me of my days in Cape Town and Joburg and is filled with oxidant killers such as Rooibos and baobab nectar. Yummy.

http://www.savaneskin.co.za/

The before...during

And after

When I was in college, my roommate Chloe Breyer and I started a magazine called "There and Back" for those who, like us, had taken the year off and travelled abroad and then come back to study at Harvard. "There and Back" should be the title of this photo montage. I thought it might be useful to remind you (in case you are going through chemo) and me (lest we forget, which we all do - it's like childbirth) of the "before" and "after". This is my year in pictures.

These Shots are OK

Alright, here's to all those who know they need to be drinking a shot of wheat grass in the morning to get maximum chloraphyl and alkalinity (remember disease breeds in an acidic environment) and to those who don't want to "juice." (Some people just aren't juicers.) They don't want to buy the multi hundred dollar Vita Mix or Optima or whatever. They don't want to clean the industrial metal parts, but they know that they need the "juice." We (because I am with you - don't want to start growing wheat grass or any other grass in our kitchens, but we want this green shot at the fountain of youth. So here's how you are going to do it. If you live near Glover Park in DC, you are going to go into the Whole Foods and walk up to the Wonji man whose Juice bar is wedged between the pizza man and the sushi chef (so wedged that during this entire last year I didn't know it was there!) and you are going to order a "Green River" or a "Green Goddess" depending on whether you like pineapple. You are then going to order a double wheat grass shot. Drink that first because it tastes, well, like grass - and you are not a cow. Then you are going to do a chaser of the Green juice of your choice: kale, cucumber, fennel, etc. with a green apple to make it sweet and make your gut not wrench. You are going to do this every morning instead of going to Starbuck's and you are going to then realize that you need one of those 10 value pack cards from the Wonji man (thanks, Sarah Williams!). Otherwise, you will go broke.

Don't Give Up

I told you about our friend photographer Joao Silva from the New York Times, an old friend from South Africa, who lost both his legs to a land mine in Afghanistan in October. Joao took his first steps at Walter Reed this week. Take a look. And if chemo is knocking you out right now and you don't know how you are going to get through these next months. Watch this video of Joao and please go put on your running shoes. You will feel so much better. I promise. Don't give up.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/joao-silvas-first-steps-to-recovery/?ref=world

Food Tips for Busy Moms

OK so maybe we aren't going to be completely vegan or raw (no cooked food) but we can clean up our acts and when we strip our diets of toxins suddenly our skin glows, and our energy is ramped up whether we are trying to get through chemo or trying to get through carpool.

I just got off the phone with Jocelyn who sat next to Mort Zuckerman at a dinner party last weekend and he was singing a vegan tune. It seems that every billionaire has caught on to the benefits of veganism and clean diets. I don't necessarily think you have to be completely vegan - I eat some lean meat and fish (very lean). But I do think if I had to do one thing I would in general eliminate dairy from the diet (I justify a sprinkle of cheese on salad for garnish and zero percent fat Greek yogurt for probiotics). Dairy just slows you down.

Here are some tips I sent to a busy friend, mom of three young kids. These are just a few tips I have been following for the last year and really recommend:

Here are foods that I am finding very helpful as go to items - big bang for buck.

There are a bunch of new ways to do kale - I like just popping in the oven sprinkling with olive oil and sea salt - that is a great appetizer. (Elizabeth's Gone Raw has the most amazing kale chips, dehydrated and seasoned with cashew nut powder and parika - tastes like Parmesan - divine!)

I have been doing a lot of roasted beets with sprinkled organic goat cheese and walnuts - a bit of olive oil and rice wine vinegar.

Eliminate processed salad dressings - when you actually look at the ingredients there is so much hidden saturated fat you may as well be eating a quarter pounder. I like olive oil and Marrakan Seasoned Rice Wine vinegar with a red top - so flavorful and so light.

I eat a lot of red lentils boiled and with indian spices - lots of garlic, ginger, turmeric and whole red peppers - reminds me of Pakistan. Add some cilantro.

It is great because it is a great protein - but it gives you gas!
A small price to pay - it's so delicious.

Shitaake mushrooms are great source of vitamin D3.

I sprinkle a bit of raw cacao powder on my Irish steel cut oatmeal with dates and walnuts and chia seeds when I need a little chocolatey flavor - cacao (raw - not cocoa) is full of anti-oxidants.

Switch out all white rice and make quinoa instead - put olive oil and salt on it for the kids - they eat it like rice.

Kiwis are really good for you.

0 percent fat plain Greek yogurt - good

Be careful with nuts - very good for you but fattening, I have learned - about a handful a day is all we are supposed to have but the anti-inflammatory quality of walnuts and almonds are great. (Make sure you buy raw almonds that haven't been bleached - ask your health food store - not all almonds are created equally!)

You may try going gluten free for a bit - I do find when I do it, I have so much more energy.

If you have to have a bread make sure it is sprouted or buy frozen Ezekial bread in the frozen section of Whole Foods.

I have been buying lots of types of wild mushrooms cooking them in a little olive oil with onions and garlic and then put in the low fat organic chicken broth from Whole Foods and simmer for a bit then blend in small batches in blender to make a really healthy soup. A lot of mushrooms have anti-cancer qualities.

Cantaloupe is anti-inflammatory.

pork tenderloin I believe is quite a lean meat and very easy to cook - I put whole onions and root vegetables and dates in the pan with it when we roast it - delicious.

Sushi is great for snacks- and they say the way they do the rice adding sweetened vinegar brings the glycemic index down - which is good - so its rice is not as bad as others as a starch.

I eat tons of avocado - but again like nuts they are fattening but have so many good nutrients that I try to balance them out.

Plain popcorn in an air popper is a great snack - I put a little olive oil and sea salt - get rid of iodized salt for sea salt.

xoxo

Tips for bouncing back from surgery

1) Hydrate. Hydrate. Hydrate. 48 hours beforehand crank up your fluid intake.
2) Exercise...I did 2 hours of Pilates - one hour on the reformer followed by an hour of mat the day before my surgery. (A year after my mastectomy, I still feel tight across my pecs and need to stretch thoroughly everyday - even though I often don't and regret it.)
3) Don't forget when you head to the hospital to put on a pink bracelet to alert nurses not to take blood pressure or blood or place an i.v. in the side where you had lymph nodes removed - if you forget and if they forget you could end up with a nasty case of lymphedema.
4) Take off your rings (including your wedding ring). Your fingers will swell and they will cut them off during surgery if you forget and leave them on.
5) Don't wear make-up. lotions or contacts.
6) Wear a loose button down shirt - you won't want to lift your arms above your head after surgery. And wear some stretchy exercise pants - nothing tight and nothing with zippers and buttons - you won't want to fool with them.
7) Bring a jog bra that zips up the front. It's good for compression after surgery and for safety pinning your drains to - as you leave the hospital.
8) Reconstruction is an in and out surgery - like the drive-thru at McDonald's - treat it like you are preparing for a play-off game and as soon as you come to from the anesthesia just begin focusing on hydrating - your mouth will feel like cotton (I like cranberry juice and am a fan of gingerale after surgery - as well as crushed ice - have some on hand at home.)
9) You will feel nauseous when you wake up so as soon as you can, start sipping on a liquid and have some graham crackers. You want to have something in your stomach before they give you your first pain killer. And immediately begin deep breathing exercises - will help with nausea.
10) Avoid Percocet if you can - I preferred Vicodan. Percocet makes you woozy and mighty constipated.
11) Another reason to hydrate - the constipation 3 days after surgery will make you feel more sick than the pain from the surgery - wean yourself off the pain meds as soon as possible - it's sore but not painful - it's not like the mastectomy.
12) Make sure you have Dulcolax at home and start taking 2 at a time as soon as you leave surgery - be preemptive about constipation. It's miserable. Also try your Chia seeds - one scoop a day.
13) If you have had radiation insist on 10 days of antibiotics after surgery because the rate of infection in radiated skin is huge. I talked to a friend last night who had her surgery in August and she was hospitalized in October for a week for an infection because she didn't take her antibiotics after surgery. I am on cipro and doxycycline. Ask for them by name and have a little Zofran on hand for nausea until you get back on your feet.
14) Get a hospital wedge pillow to sleep on at home - you won't feel like lying back too far - you can get them at any hospital supply store.
15) Don't lie around. The sooner you can begin walking, the sooner you will get the anesthesia out of your system and it is the best way to counter pain and nausea. You can begin walking almost right away. Take a daily 30 minute to 45 minute walk.
16) Shower as soon as you can. I waited a few days because of the drains and realize that was a mistake.
17) Wear button up pajamas that you can pin your drains to. I favor the silky white kind that look like you are on the set of Breakfast at Tiffany's. You want to feel pretty.
18) Have group e-mail list set-up before surgery so that your husband (or 9 year-old) can e-blast your friends who will want to know how you are. Place a phone by the bed but place the ringer off so that calls don't wake you but so you can communicate and don't have to get up to find a phone when you wake up from naps.
19) Ginger - ginger is a great natural anti-nausea trick. Eat something with ginger - I found Thai tofu and broccoli with coconut milk and ginger was just perfect. Yum! Remember to eat lots of small meals to keep the meds from making you nauseous.
20) Smile - you'll feel better in a week. This will not last. I promise.

P.S.

In case you thought that chemo induced menopause is for real - think again. Maybe it's my new voluptuous self, but 11 months to the day after chemo ended something bizarre has happened to my body (and, no, I am not pregnant, but let's just say now I could be if I weren't careful.) You hear about babies born after chemo. Let's just say this was one side effect that I did not share with the world. Sure I had hot flashes during chemo. Everyone knows about chemo induced menopause. But mine seemed to be for real and that made me sad. I could accept the gray hair. I could accept my battle scars, but that was a bridge too far and not something I wanted to talk about. That meant I really was old. And the idea of not having any more children (though of course, I'm done. Really, Greg) but the idea that mother nature was telling you 'time's up.' That was just too sad for me. It hit me particularly hard when friends recently returned to me the bassinets that Luke had used and that I had lent to them. I left them in the front hall until a babysitter arrived one Saturday morning and asked if a baby was on its way. I had them removed from my sight immediately. It all put me back two years before when Luke was born. It seemed SO long ago. I suddenly realized I was really done, even though some friends with whom I was pregnant are now having another. Well, word to the wise, even if you think you are in menopause after chemo and you are of a childbearing age and don't want to get pregnant, you may want to consider birth control. Let's just say, I laughed at the nurse who gave me a pregnancy test as I went into surgery on Tuesday, having me urinate in a cup. How ridiculous, I thought. Impossible. Think again.

Another Tale of Survival

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/02/04/bloody-cairo-hand-account/

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/fncs-greg-palkot-and-olaf-wiig-talk-to-john-roberts-about-being-attacked-in-cairo_b51838

Groundhog Day

So my surgery was February 1 - technically a day before Groundhog Day, but that is not how it felt. As we woke at 4:30 am to head for Georgetown Hospital everything about it felt the same as the previous April when I prepared for the double mastectomy. Everything. It WAS Groundhog Day. The doctors were the same. The black Sharpie markers outlining the incisions were the same. The check-in procedure was the same (though the overly zealous nurse at the registration desk told me I didn't have a living will and made me walk through those uplifting 'end of life' choices and then beg two witnesses in a very depressing waiting room to sign the legal waivers even though I had filled one of those out the year before as well.) I hadn't wore lipstick (or gloss) as I did to my mastectomy. (Sorry, Geralyn.) Because they said no make-up and this time I complied. I took off my wedding ring and put them in a plastic ziploc that looked like it was for biohazard waste but whatever - it did the trick. The nurse was worried that my heart rate was low (pulse of 35) and while I may pretend to be a world class athlete, it would take a lot of Pilates to get that low. My blood pressure was also that of a reptile and my designated driver (Greg) looked a little pale and woozy in his corner seat. He was in the same seat as when we arrived for pre-op in April. This time though he seems to have caught Luke's stomach virus from the weekend and kept excusing himself to throw-up in the bathroom. I sent him home and called my mom. She didn't get there before the surgery.

My famously confident surgeon Dr. Spear came in wearing a dapper suit and European tie and began marking me up for surgery. Catherine, the pretty blond resident, I am told is going to be my advocate once I am out cold to make sure that he doesn't give me the 'Heidi Montag.' It seems she may have stepped out for a minute because the next day Dr. Spear called me at home to see how I liked his handiwork. I told him that I had been too scared to look and hadn't opened the compression bra. He said, "I'll stay on the line while you look." So I unzipped my sports bra and low and behold, I looked like Barbie. I knew Catherine wouldn't be able to stand up to him, but maybe I am secretly glad. Dr. Spear was very proud and I must say he is a magician. Even the scars are discreet.

And the only reason I share all of this (afterall, what haven't I shared with you) is that I think it is really important to understand the strides that have been made in making women feel whole again - even bionic - after breast cancer tries to steal our femininity. The procedures have improved so much in the last few years. And despite the maligning of silicone implants, there is a reason everyone in Hollywood trades up. They give you your confidence back and that, dear reader, is no small thing for a breast cancer patient. You have to do whatever you can to feel pretty again. So if you feel like getting the 'Heidi Montag,' I say go for it. Fight back. Think twice before getting the tram flap surgery or any of the "take fat from one area and make a boob out of it". It sounds like a two-fer, lipo plus breast augmentation but from what I hear it is just an unnecessarily hard surgery on your body. And the mastectomy is hard enough.

The reason for this surgery is that at the time of the mastectomy they put in expanders (or placeholders) to keep the skin stretched while I did radiation. They have to let the radiated skin settle down (it tightens and contracts). So six months later they normally advise you to get your exchange surgery to give everything a chance to heal. At that time you can decide between saline and silicone implants. There is a bit of renewed controversy over silicone (will post the latest article) but the statistics seem low and I am afraid everything in this life carries with it a degree of risk.

So Greg left before I went into surgery - it was not sympathetic labor. It was the flu. I recognized the symptoms because the night before when I came home from work there was a stench in the hallway outside Luke's room where he had thrown up. There were the tell-tale paper towels and box of wipies in the hall. And the girls, with an eye toward irony, had left a pink Susan G. Komen candle burning in the hallway to get rid of the smell.

As I came to from the anesthesia all I remember was the nurse asking me how my husband was doing. "How did I know?" And might I add, at that point, "Do I really care?" My mom sat with me as the nurse explained to me once again about the drains - how to measure them in the little cc cups. Groundhog Day.

We got home and the anesthesia and adrenalin gave me a lift. I felt that unnatural high after you give birth. I brought Greg some tea in bed. I came crashing down the next day and slept and slept. The pain killers made me nauseous. I don't recommend using Percocet. They make you woozy and the pain is not so serious that you need them. Vicodan was plenty. But I've already weaned myself off that because it was making me loopy.

I knew surgery was going to go well because when I looked at my horoscope when I got home it said: February 1: "You benefit from the belief that good luck is coming to you. So continue to look for signs, such as a cricket on the hearth, a penny on the ground or a ladybug that lands on your shoulder." OK so that was for Aries, not Taurus, but my birthday is on the cusp and I've always reserved the option of being able to choose from whichever I thought was most apt.

The days at home have been boring. My dreams of getting the house organized or watching lots of movies never materialized. Instead I did what I would normally do at work. I flipped between 3 cable stations and the networks to see who had anything new from Egypt. I e-mailed friends who were on the air with questions to ask at the White House press briefing. I couldn't let go. And then we got news that our friends and colleagues Greg Palkot and Olaf Wiig were nearly lynched by a mob in Egypt. Ibrahim had escaped. Elizabeth Arrott's children (VOA) had had to fend off rioters keeping them out of their first floor home in Cairo until their father was able to ferry them back to Moscow to safety. The news has gotten too sad. Too repetitive so here I sit watching Shrek with Luke. Greg is upstairs with the Geek Squad. Annalise spent most of yesterday trying to set up a FaceBook page for him. Tonight I got a message "Jennifer Griffin is now friends with Greg Myre." Well, maybe on the internet. For now we are all going a bit stir crazy and cabin fever is setting in.

Elizabeth's Gone Raw in DC

Before my surgery, Mary Beth pulled me aside in Dr. Spear's office (my plastic surgeon) and told me about another patient who had tackled her cancer by going raw and had started a restaurant in a townhouse in DC on L Street. If you've read Kris Carr's book, Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips/Diet, then you will be familiar with Brian Clement and the Hippocrates Institute. Elizabeth is hosting a dinner for Brian and his wife this Saturday night. Call the restaurant below and make a reservation. It will change the way you view every bite you eat.

http://elizabethsgoneraw.com/location.html

Triple Negative Webinar 2/14 - give yourself a Valentine

http://us.meeting-stream.com/susangkomenbreastcancerfoundation_021411/

Heading into surgery tomorrow - last one!

Pamela Anderson watch out. I have Dr. Scott Spear - Washington's answer to Dr. 90210. My hope is these new ones are not as unforgiving as the current placeholders (expanders). This is the last reconstruction and Luke is preparing to ice my boo-boos - or else he had a very late night last night and didn't tell me!
Will be home recovering for the next 2 weeks. Keep the faith.
xoxo

Here's how you pre-order This Burning Land...avail March 22 on Amazon and elsewhere

http://www.amazon.com/This-Burning-Land-Transformed-Israeli-Palestinian/dp/0470550902/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296425208&sr=8-1

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/This-Burning-Land/Greg-Myre/e/9780470550908/?itm=9&USRI=this+burning+land

This Burning Land (and I don't mean chemo)

I promised a 3rd book recommendation and this one you must pre-order on Amazon just as soon as you finish reading this posting.
The kids like to joke that the above cover is a picture of me carrying Annalise on my way to the grocery store when we lived in Jerusalem - M-16 slung over my shoulder. Very funny. Actually, that's a picture of an Israeli settler - M-16 slung over HER shoulder - and that's not Annalise as a baby, though it could have been. This is the book that Greg and I co-wrote about our time in Israel and the Palestinian territories covering the Intifada from 1999-2007. It was the era of suicide bombings. Both our girls were born at Hadassah Mount Scopus in a delivery room with a plate glass window overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem and the golden Dome of the Rock - the ultimate room with a view. When Amelia was born it was on the eve of the invasion of Iraq and when we left the hospital we were given a gas mask tent to put over the baby's crib in case of a chemical weapons attack, a reminder that Israelis prepare for war from the day they are born. We write about this and other experiences covering the conflict for Fox News and the New York Times. We like to joke that we are the Mary Matalin and James Carville of the Middle East. At dinner parties people will literally turn their backs to one of us depending on their politics and whether they are NYT readers or Fox News viewers. It got to be laughable as they would heap one of us with praise and insult the other. We laughed because we covered the news straight down the middle. "Just the facts, Ma'am" to quote Joe Friday. No one believed us.

So the book is called "This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Published by Wiley and written by Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin, but Greg deserves most of the credit. It was his baby.
It is available starting March 27 but can be preordered online and if you are in Washington, DC on Sunday, March 27 please stop by Politics and Prose on Connecticut Avenue because we are doing a reading at 5 pm.

The reason I am particularly proud of this book is that Greg and I did not get divorced while writing it. In fact, one of Greg's favorite things to do during chemotherapy was to bring his Toughbook laptop and sit just far enough away from me so that I couldn't reach him (to strangle him) when he would then start peppering me with questions about what I remembered about this or that episode during our seven years covering the war in the Middle East. Yes, while burning chemotherapy agents seared through my veins from a mainline drip, Greg and I wrote this book.

The book opens with the lines: "The phone rang with urgent news from the Gaza Strip, and I immediately grabbed my two most essential items: my flak jacket and my breast pump...." I guess I should have known that I would end up with breast cancer. How oddly strident I must have been to insist on nursing my babies while traipsing down to Gaza to interview the head of Hamas or the mother of a suicide bomber. I did both times. And sometimes the milk curdled when the Israeli soldiers didn't let us pass through Erez crossing quickly enough. It was a Medela Pump in Style. Can you picture me in Gaza, head and hair covered to do my interview with Sheikh Yassin and a Medela Pump in Style slung over my shoulder. I was much too attached to my breasts and in fact I was never that modest when it came to them (now I feel such detachment that they are literally an object but in those days they were still functional.) I remember the time that I was still pumping and had closed the door to my office and we were there really late for a Fox Report hit (around 2 in the morning) and an intern came barging in the door to deliver something to me. I think he was so shocked that he became paralyzed and instead of turning on his heals he simply stayed there and continued talking to me and I said, "Avi, I'm pumping." I don't know why I worried so much about breast feeding my girls. I sometimes wonder if I hadn't breastfed Luke if I would have found this cancer (my 9 cm tumor) a little earlier. But no need to go there. Justin and I had some of our best news scoops at the Pentagon because I would kick him out of our booth to wander the halls while I pumped.

"This Burning Land" is really a quote from two poets: one Israeli and one Arab. My favorite chapter is: "What To Do When Friends Are Kidnapped." Unfortunately, too many of ours were. (It's one of the reasons we moved back to the U.S.) In this chapter I describe in first person the kidnapping of my Fox colleagues Olaf Wiig and Steve Centanni. "The Palestinian men greeted one another with kisses on both cheeks. We were invited to sit under a tin-roofed garage attached to the apartment building. The chairs were arranged in a circle, and all of the major Palestinian factions were represented. It was pitch black because there was no electricity in the neighborhood. Israeli war planes had knocked out Gaza's power supply in the recent weeks of fighting. The headlights from the pickup trucks were turned on and provided the only light...."

But it is the conclusion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - the last lines of the Afterword - that I find most compelling. "It can at times feel like a perpetual war, but life goes on. It is never an easy lesson to digest but one that I had already learned: some battles must simply be managed." The same can, of course, be said about cancer.

Preorder here, if you'd like:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/This-Burning-Land/Greg-Myre/e/9780470550908/?itm=9&USRI=this+burning+land

The Foremost Good Fortune (Surviving Breast Cancer in China)

http://vimeo.com/19130985

Crazy Sexy Diet

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/book-excerpt-crazy-sexy-diet-kris-carr/story?id=12633095

http://crazysexylife.com/

Q and A with Christopher Hitchens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GeuLDRwfOhs

"Do not go gentle into that good night..."

OK, girlfriend, I know it's been a long time. Call it paralysis. Maybe I have said it before. If not, it bears repeating. If the year of cancer treatment is a marathon (Juliette reminded me as I began my 17 rounds of chemo in 2009 that I, ever the sprinter, needed to prepare for mile 15, when it really starts to burn...) Well, if last year was a marathon. The year after is a sprint. A sprint to get as far away from the anniversary of the diagnosis and every anniversary since so that you can get that next year under your belt. Well, I guess I have been busy sprinting because I haven't felt like sitting down and updating all that has been going through my mind. Trying to get back to work, though at times I find myself distracted or dangerously engaged in too much multi-tasking. So this is why I have not been writing. Please forgive me and know that I have been saving up a number of posts so you may be hearing a lot from me in the coming days and weeks. I've always been a bit all or nothing and now I have realized I have a few things to say.

For one, I am preparing for my last surgery next week on February 1. The final reconstruction. Had a final meeting with my plastic surgeon, Dr. Scott Spear at Georgetown today. Genius. But glad I met with him. I was concerned when his nurse told me that the implants they would replace my place-holding expanders with would look "more natural" a.k.a. less in your face. I made sure that Dr. Spear knew that, in fact, I am not looking for something more "natural" i.e. showing the effects of gravity. I told him that I did not go through all I went through last year to look more "natural". Afterall, everyone in the world now knows they are no longer real so why be coy now. I want perfect.

More on that tomorrow. In the meantime, everyone who has had a cancer diagnosis knows that nighttime is the hardest so you may ask why I just tuned into Q and A with Brian Lamb to hear Christopher Hitchens' musings on cancer and death. Well, I found it gripping, as will you. I will include the link along with two must buy (actually three) books. For now, goodnight. And sorry for the period of quiet. I now have found that in fact I have a lot I have been meaning to tell you.

Lymphedema - some myths and how to avoid it

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/phys-ed-lifting-weights-after-breast-cancer/?emc=eta1

The greatest gift of all...

Why we need to fight for Avastin

Don't let the FDA take this option away from breast cancer patients. It's helping too many women.

http://ww5.komen.org/KomenNewsArticle.aspx?id=6442452909

Take two aspirin....more evidence

Aspirin reduces chance of death from breast cancer - start taking 75 mg per day, even if you haven't had breast cancer. It prevents the cancer itself and prevents recurrence, according to new findings.

http://www.bupa.co.uk/health_information/html/health_news/101210_aspirin_reduce_risk_death_cancer.html

San Antonio Breast Conference....Now

The annual breast cancer conference in San Antonio is taking place right now...google the findings - the latest cutting edge research is presented there every year. And if you haven't had your mammogram this year - give yourself a Christmas present and make an appointment. New studies show that only half of all women get mammograms each year. Ridiculous when it is so easy to use it to screen. Over 40? Get a mammogram. It will save your life.

http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20101210/false-positive-mammograms-linked-breast-cancer

Super Foods for Your Baby (and You)

http://www.babycenter.com/0_7-superfoods-to-boost-any-kids-diet_1745746.bc

"Give it to Mikey. He'll eat anything!"
That goes for Luke too. He has been my little vegan experiment.
So far so good. Though he discovered lollipops on Halloween and they are now among his Top 10 requests, along with the You Tube video of the "Kitty Cat Vacuuming" (which combines Luke's two favorite things in the world).

A Vegan Thanksgiving

We didn't have one but I must say my mom's broccoli gratin was a winner. And the organic turkey from Whole Foods was the best thing I have ever tasted.
These recipes from the NYT are so amazing they will give you a new understanding of how yummy vegan food can be.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/08/health/20101108_thanksgiving.html

Especially the orange scented fruit gratin and sweet potato recipe!

A good soup

Courtesy Ina Garten and my sister Caitlin:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/roasted-butternut-squash-soup-and-curry-condiments-recipe/index.html

Don't Mess With Texas

It’s not easy to eat organic in McAllen, unless you are perhaps looking for something hydroponic. Afterall Texas intercepts more than 100,000 pounds of pot a year. On a single night flying with the Texas Department of Public Safety, DPS, we found ourselves in a high speed chase that netted 1800 hundred pounds of marijuana with a street value of 700,000 dollars. My stomach was in my throat as I had flashbacks to flying with the Thunderbirds shortly after I arrived at the Pentagon. Please don’t let me throw up. I made it through 17 rounds of chemo without throwing up. But helicopters always make me sick. I first realized I was pregnant with Luke on a Blackhawk in Afghanistan - threw up in the Korengal Valley and nearly hit Admiral Mullen.

But I digress.

I knew we had entered the Wild West when I arrived at DPS headquarters in Austin and I entered a room full of law enforcement - all male and most wearing Stetsons. My team had already arrived from L.A. Keith Railey and Laura Prabucki. The “A Team”. We sat in new state of the art ops and intell center. I knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore when they showed us a map of 66,000 sex offenders scattered across the Lone Star State. And during our interview, word came in that the local authorities had just captured one of Texas’ top 10 most wanted. “We’re a law and order state, ma’am.” They weren’t kidding. It’s just that the cartels south of the border had not gotten the memo.

That morning in Austin, my best friend from 5th grade Ginny Taylor Scott picked me up with my goddaughter Sophie and her big sister Lily at the airport in Austin. Ginny, you’ll remember, set up this blog for me a year ago. In fact my trip to Texas coincided with the one year anniversary of when she flew out to DC shortly after I was diagnosed. She and Sarah Williams helped me babyproof the house for Luke. I remember both of them everytime I go to open my kitchen cabinets and my fingers get pinched in the babylocking door or when the toilet seat cover remains locked as I am running into the bathroom followed usually by at least one child needing my undivided attention. There are also the 2 baby gates that remind me of the Erez crossing into Gaza that I have to make my way through just to get from my front door to my bedroom. Luke is the only one who remembers to shut them behind him.

Ginny and her family had mapped out every vegan option in Austin for me. Our first stop was Casa de Luz where Ginny’s father was none too pleased as we sat on a porch outside of a “whole grain, no sugar, nothing white” family style buffet which looked like it was right out of the Moosewood cookbook: steamed kale, broccoli soup, beets three different ways, cabbage (“cancer hates cabbage”) and some more cabbage, and a walnut paste that reminded me of eating Georgian food at Mama Zoya’s in Moscow. The kids had a little brown rice and the almond cookies I sneaked them for desert. En route to Ginny’s house, we passed silver air stream trailer after air stream trailer of yummy street food - Peking Duck, crepes, tacos - these funky trailers are an Austin trademark.

We sneaked in a 90 minute yoga class just up the road from Ginny’s stylish ranch home in her Austin suburb. We ran there. It was one of those Baptiste flow hot yoga classes similar to what Lila used to teach. One of the hardest classes I had ever taken - we must have done 45 minutes of plank on my mastectomy weakened pecs, but I was floating when it was done, the perfect antidote to flying cross country and leaving Washington at 5 am. The next morning Ginny wanted to show me her Pure Barre class - it should have been called pure butt - because that is the only muscle we worked. I could barely walk when we were done and coming on the heels of the yoga class 12 hours earlier my body was crying “uncle.” And just as Lila and Anne-Marie did in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, I was given the royal treatment. At breakfast Ginny got up early to cook me steel cut oatmeal. But she almost didn’t let me have the chopped organic Medjool dates that I love because she said they are the highest sugar content on the glycemic index. Is nothing sacred? How about all the anti-oxidants in dates? She took care of that with the most perfect bowl of mixed berries each morning - and, of course, a pot of freshly brewed green tea.

My healthy eating ended on the five hour drive south to the Mexican border. I had visions of little Mexican roadside stands with fresh guacamole and salsa. Instead en route to McAllen, it was Cracker Barrel and Jack in the Box. McAllen was a strip mall gone mad. On the days that we were by the Rio Grande doing lives, we would drive for miles just to find something fresh. I have never seen more fast food American chains concentrated in one city. It must be the home of the fried bean burrito and french fry. Insane. It was a slippery slope. The healthiest thing I could find on one particular day was the grilled chicken sandwich at Chick-Fil-A. Yo.

But this was Fox country and boy were we given the royal treatment - and boy were the cartels happy to see us leave when we finally packed up our satellite truck and live shot position on the banks of the Rio Grande. For two days straight from 7 am until 8 pm we essentially blocked a lucrative corridor where drugs and people cross into McAllen and then make their way up the interstate highway into cities all over the US. By just having a presence we stopped the flow of drugs for two days - we did what Homeland Security and the National Guard have failed to do by “just showing up.” We were eyeball to eyeball with the cartel members. 2 spotters, then 4 sat across from us for the entire 2 days. They were wearing camouflage and hid in the bushes about 100 yards from us on the other side of the Rio Grande River inside Mexico. It was surreal. We had two State troopers with their binoculars and guns trained on them, as we stood exposed doing our live shots. If it hadn’t been so unnerving, it would have been like we were on safari in Africa. But this was a real hunt and these were vicious predators.

I spoke to one State Trooper - a former Marine who served in Fallujah in 2007 and he said he had a greater chance getting shot here in McAllen than when he was in Iraq. Shocking commentary. You have to see it to believe it. The cartels are brazen. They recruit in our prisons, they have co-opted our gangs. It’s a 40 billion dollar industry. Who is doing all of those drugs? I have no idea why we haven’t created a DMZ down south. 97 percent of the illegal immigration comes through the southwest border.

It’s a game of cat and mouse that we are losing.

To put it in perspective, one restaurant owner, who introduced himself as Che and whose family restaurant in McAllen, The Patio, is in a building that dates back to 1693, told me that to understand the border region one needs to remember that it has always been full of bandits and kidnappings and shoot-outs. Nothing new. Well maybe so but we make a mockery of our law enforcement by sending National Guard there with 10 bullets per soldier - only to be used in self- defense. They are an impotent lot and this is not Mayberry.

When I got on the Delta flight to leave, I smiled as I opened the In-flight magazine and read a first person story written by one of George Lopez’ comedy writers. He was lamenting what he dubbed the “Tofurkey” holidays that he spent each Thanksgiving with his mom, a devout vegan. “Like most 12-year-olds, I just wanted to be ‘normal’,” wrote Dave Hanson. “I groaned at the wad of bulgur, lentils and diced tofu she’d crafted into the shape of a small turkey. Side dishes included a grain dish of seaweed and groats, mustard greens in a foamy, turbid broth and gravy made from whole-wheat flour, soy sauce and apple cider.” As he tucked into the mashed potatoes, he asked in dismay why the potatoes tasted “grainy”? His mom replied: “Potatoes have no nourishment. I added raw wheat germ.”

It is a conversation that could be had at either end of our dining room table.

I remember a year ago when my dear friends collected money for what would be a year of spoiling. It started with an organic turkey covered in a dishtowel (no plastic). And carried on through the year as the wonderful personal chef Christine Merkle helped me back on my feet delivering food that was carefully crafted from Whole Foods - all thanks to the extraordinary generosity of my dear friends - you know who you are. This Thanksgiving, I won’t be wearing a wig, but I will be saying “Thanks” loudly, even as I dip into my mom’s alternative brown bread stuffing. I hope you can hear me wherever you might be with your families because you, dear reader, gave me my life back. I am now back to covering other people’s wars, which is exactly where I belong.

CAUSE Because

Because only one percent of our nation actually serves in the military. The rest don’t know the country is at war. They don’t have to quit their jobs to take care of their brothers or sons who return as amputees or can’t hold down a job because they suffer from PTS - post-traumatic stress. They don’t have to endure the rage that comes from self-medicating so that you can sleep. The caregivers of our Wounded Warriors are showing some of their own war wounds, but nobody wants to talk about that...

Last year the CAUSE (Comfort for America’s Uniformed Service) gala was the first public outing for me after I started chemo. It is a night I will never forget and I must say I was a little shaken as Veterans’ Day rolled around, each milestone in the series of one year anniversaries that will make up this year as I float away from my cancer diagnosis and treatment is as monumental as the year before. It is a different kind of pain and healing. It’s where you heal the hidden wounds those that aren’t as obvious as your mastectomy scars or a bald head and lack of eyebrows. The war is over. You can resume your normal life, but you are changed. Oh how cancer patients resemble our Wounded Warriors. The PTS syndrome is exactly the same. We are a little distant. We can’t sleep because the anxiety of the memories of the fight and fear that the cancer will return is so palpable. If we slow down enough to really think about it the fear is crippling so we don’t. We start looking for more adrenalin. We start living life faster and faster - at least that is what the control freaks among us attempt. Others sink into a depression. Everything is an anniversary. One year since the first chemo, one year from the surgery, one year from shaving your head, the first Thanksgiving. The first Christmas. They are all firsts in that first year - something to be endured and gotten through.

If the year of treatment for breast cancer is a marathon to be endured, the year after is a sprint taking you far away from the diagnosis. And for Triple Negative patients like myself, the first 3 years are the most dangerous in terms of recurrence. We spent all of the last year embracing the reality of the diagnosis, not shying away from any of it. Then suddenly you are pronounced done - you are free to leave. You are no longer a prisoner of hospitals and doctors appointments, and suddenly all you want to do is forget, otherwise the fear of recurrence will overwhelm you.

Suddenly, with a snap of the fingers you are supposed to reintegrate as if you aren’t a totally changed person, much the same as the Wounded Warrior is supposed to come home, forget the war and go to the grocery store. You are among the lucky ones, you survived. But you know a lot who didn’t and that knowledge will be with you as you try to get back to your daily life, your daily routine. It is your new reality.

It was very important for me to stand up in front of the military crowd and again emcee the CAUSE gala. This year we raised 700,000 dollars for Wounded Warriors up from 200,000 dollars last year. CAUSE provides video libraries and massage therapy and outreach to the returning wounded at Walter Reed and 7 other Army Medical facilities. It is an invaluable service that fills a need in these hospitals helping to pull the wounded vet back from the brink as they heal. It was important for me to stand up one year later to prove to myself that indeed I went to war. I received a few scars that will always be with me but I survived. I lived to fight another day.

I didn’t find the words this year to really explain all of the similarities between Wounded Warriors and cancer survivors. I’ll try again next year. But most of those present knew that my heart was in the right place even if I didn’t speak clearly or eloquently enough to do that crowd justice. At my table that night was Leslie Cnossen whose brother Lt. Dan Cnossen is the Navy SEAL who lost both his legs in Afghanistan a year ago and became a battle buddy of mine in spirit as we both fought to keep our dignity through our treatment and recovery. Dan didn’t come, which is probably a good thing. He was out with some SEAL friends who had come to town, which shows how he is getting his life back together and doesn’t need to be a poster child for Wounded Vets at well-meaning galas. Leslie brought the sister of Lt Brendan Looney, another SEAL who wasn’t so lucky. He died in a Blackhawk crash 7 weeks ago in Afghanistan. An unspeakable tragedy for him and his family. He was a golden boy, a star athlete from DeMatha. His kid sister had tears in her eyes the whole night. She sat across from Marine General Joe Dunford and his wife Ellyn who had just returned from Dover where they met General John Kelly’s son Robert, who had come home that morning - Veterans Day - to Arlington National Cemetary.

I was thinking about General Kelly who I knew from Anbar and Joao Silva, the New York Times prize winning photographer and old friend, who was now lying in a hospital bed at Walter Reed. He stepped on a land mine and has now joined the 120 plus double amputees that this war has now produced. Greg and I have known Joao since our days in South Africa. I told Joao in an e-mail after he arrived at Walter Reed that Lt Dan Cnossen has just run his first marathon on his new prosthetics and I have no doubt that Joao will be the first double amputee to win a Pulitzer from a war zone. But in the meantime please pray for these heroes.

Picture Day at School for Luke

This photo was sent to me by my sister Caitlin while we were in Jerusalem.

Race Day and Beyond...

I asked Dudi and Yonat to come by the hotel early before the race. We were staying at the David Citadel Hotel next to the King David and I had just finished having breakfast on the terrace overlooking the real David Citadel near Jaffa Gate. The Jerusalem stone literally seemed to float. I began lacing up my pink trimmed UnderArmour walking shoes and opened the envelopes that Komen had left - little pink notes that could be placed in the Western Wall, prayers for our sisters, prayers for the end of this scourge. The night before I had heard from Gary Zimmerman who had been given a tour of Haifa's Rambam Hospital where he had been told that there is currently a surge in breast cancer cases in Northern Israel. Why? My head began spinning - was it those 34 days during the Lebanon war that I spent on the border with Katyushas falling all around? Did that give me and others breast cancer? I had long thought that the stress of that period certainly may have contributed, in part. So much adrenalin. So little sleep. How much of this disease is environmental?

Anyway, the race was to begin at 12 noon at Sacher Garden - the same field where a bunch of ragtag journalists (myself and Greg included) used to play pick-up games of soccer on Saturday mornings (Shabbat) before the Intifada started in 2000 when we still had time on our hands. Those games got to be rough at times. A lot of aggression was taken out on the uneven playing fields as we all tried to still prove we had it - whatever it was. The competitive spirit was fierce.

I had to stop by Tsvi's before the Komen race began. After all, that is where I spent so many hours - the start of every day in Israel. A "cafe ha fukh" (Israeli latte) and a blow-out. We straightened and colored and highlighted my hair. It was a ritual. It's where I read the papers and transitioned from home and babies and diapers to work each morning. I saw Tsvi and Hanan more than I saw Greg in those busy years. I used to take Annalise in a Moses basket to Tsvi Michaeli's hair salon on Marcus Street just days after giving birth, so that I could feel myself again. I had to show him my new hair - silver and cropped. He patted my head as I walked down Marcus from our first apartment at Marcus Shteim (2 Marcus Street) above the Millers. Arnona, who was getting her toes done in the sunshine, squealed with delight when she saw me. Hanan and Tsvi and I hugged until all the years dissolved and it was as though I were living down the street, asking them to squeeze me in between clients.

But I digress. Dudi and Yonat indulged my need to stop by my other two Jerusalem apartments: Hagdud Ha Ivri - where Amelia was born and our last home - really a house on Mishmar Ha'am 22. The grass seed that Greg lay was still thriving and the pomegranate tree appeared to be well cared for. It is an old Arab style house with a garden. The number plate above the door was the same that I bought from the Armenian pottery place next to the American Consulate in East Jerusalem. It was as though we hadn't left. We snapped a few shots for the girls and went to the office.

The Fox bureau was still in JCS. And little did I know but the bureau had planned a surprise for me. Yonat had ordered t-shirts made that on the front said: "Fight like a Girl" and on the back said "Team Jennifer 2010." But I wasn't supposed to come by the office and see them. So Yonat called ahead and everyone, including Eli, took theirs off so that the surprise would not be ruined. I was oblivious. I kept wondering why they weren't walking with me to the race. It was about to begin. So I ran ahead. I did a few interviews and then I heard the announcer say, "Will Jennifer Griffin please meet her team by the stage?" That is when the bureau surprised me with the t-shirt. They were all wearing them and I put mine on over my pink Komen survivor shirt. It was amazing. Claudia Cowan, from the San Francisco bureau, joined us for the race with her girlfriends from Tel Aviv.

So many people who I had known in Jerusalem came out for the race. It was hard to even get started walking because there were so many people to hug. There were Lori and Marvin from my favorite bakery La Cuisine. I always bought my Shabbat sweets and cakes and quiches from La Cuisine. I especially loved and usually had to drive out to Talpiot to pick up the mini quiches that Lori made. After the babies were born I usually made my way over to Azza Street to see Marvin and satisfy my sweet tooth. Lori and Marvin were at the Race. Lori had breast cancer. We had never talked about it. She was still wearing her tell-tale lymphedema sleeve - the same one that I wore on the plane ride over. We hugged.

We started up the road. Israelis kept looking at our t-shirts and saying "Mizeh, Jennifer?" Everyone wanted one. We took over the streets and 7500 people wound their way through the narrow city streets and ended up next to Solomon's pools outside the Old City walls. Fox and Friends were nice enough to take us live. We used a fancy new technology to go live from a back pack while we were walking. It was amazing. And then suddenly I saw Oron Dan, son of my dear friend Uri Dan, who had written for the New York Post for years and was one of Ariel Sharon's closest friends. Oron was wearing a crisp pink shirt and we both sobbed when we hugged each other. Uri died of lung cancer in 2005. He had treated me like a daughter. Then there was Sharon who was very choked up as she explained to me that she had had breast cancer 5 years before but didn't know that it was Triple Negative until she read my blog - this blog - and asked her doctors and figured out that she was Triple Negative. She had brought a team. Their name…The Triple Negative team. Wow. That blew me away.

On stage at the end of the race was another survivor. Allen Wilson. Yes, he too had had breast cancer. Not once, but twice. Yes, ladies, men get this too. And Allen is bravely explaining that around the world. There is so much more to say but we got home and went straight to Amelia's gymnastics meet and Annalise's soccer game. And with jet lag it is now 5 in the morning. So good night and I will send another update tomorrow. Shabbat Shalom.