Back With No Vengeance Whatsoever.

Sorry about the mini-hiatus there.  It was a crazy two weeks with midterms and what not, and it promises to only get crazier with the fast approaching second-semester auditions.  So.  I will try really hard to keep up with my blog but please understand if I miss a few here and there.

Life has been pretty good for the most part. I got to visit home for a bit, and then got busier than ever with work and school.  Not to mention Halloween really has me on edge.  You know how that goes.

There's another part of October that always tends to grind my gears (--PGriffin).  It's not so much that I don't understand the importance of breast cancer awareness month...it's more that I don't understand why no one seems to be aware that October is also liver cancer awareness month, and why--upon completion of the month of September--it was never mentioned that September is also:

• Childhood Cancer Awareness Month
• Gynecologic Cancer Awareness Month
• Hodgkin's Lymphoma Awareness Month 
• Leukemia Awareness Month
• Lymphoma Awareness Month
• Multiple Myeloma Awareness Month
• Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month
*Mesothelioma Awareness Day
• Thyroid Cancer Awareness Week

• Prostate Cancer Awareness Month

                                               

Hmm.  Something's wrong with this...Now don't get me wrong--I understand that breast cancer affects a great percentage of people.  I understand that it is a devastating cancer that has taken countless lives.  

But I can't help but acknowledge that if caught early, breast cancer is highly treatable now due to all the funding it's received...and maybe if we put the same amount of funding into all the other cancers...we might see a decrease in cancer fatalities.  

It also kills me that the motto for breast cancer awareness is "finding a cure for breast cancer."  This is where I get very upset.  If we are going to focus our attentions on breast cancer, can we at least make the motto "FINDING A CURE FOR CANCER"???? AS LIKE A GENERAL THING????  I dunno...as a courtesy to the millions of people with other cancers who would also like to see a cure?

I also have a problem--as a woman--with the way breast cancer awareness is portrayed.  Slogans like "save the boobies" or my personal favorite..."STOP THE WAR IN MY RACK"...it's like...ok really peeps?? This is disgusting.  I understand the attempt to be tongue-in-cheek...but then can't we just stick with "Fight like a girl"?  Breast cancer awareness is about helping women.  WOMEN.  IT'S ABOUT THE WOMAN.  Not her tits. 

If we go along with the current method of slogan creating, may I suggest:

for prostate cancer: SAVE THE ASSHOLES!

for ovarian cancer: SAVE THE EGG SACK!

and of course, for sarcomas: SAVE MY RIGHT TO BONE!!!

You see how disgusting this is?  I think everyone understands and cares about the need for cancer awareness without sexualizing it.  Call me a feminist?  I'm really not.  I just have respect for myself and for other women.

To conclude, I give you the following:

NOVEMBER: Pancreatic, Stomach, Lung/Mesothelioma, Carcinoid Cancer Awarness Month//Also National Family Caregivers Awareness Month (THANKS FAMILY!!!)

DECEMBER:  Christmas Awareness Month

JANUARY: Cervical Cancer Awareness Month

FEBRUARY: CANCER PREVENTION MONTH

MARCH: Colorectal and Kidney Cancer Awareness month/Jesse was born on the 25th and needs a present awareness month

APRIL: Head/Neck, Testicular, and Esophageal Cancer Awareness Month

MAY: Brain, Melanoma, and Skin Cancer Awareness Month

JUNE: 1st Sunday of the month is National Cancer Survivors Day!

JULY: Bladder and Sarcoma Awareness Month (what, what!)

Could everyone do me a favor and be aware of all cancers 365 days a year?

Love Yas,

Jesse

Remembering Nataline, and Why I'll Vote for Obama

This is a post where I get into politics---something I've avoided like the plague on this blog because I don't want to lose readers due to political affiliations.  I would like to start off by saying that I'm not one of those people who would stone Stacey Dash for tweeting her support for Romney or anything like that.  I'm liberal, I have my opinions, but I wouldn't go apeshit on someone for being conservative.

But I ask that regardless of what your political affiliation is, whether or not you follow or understand politics, you give this post a chance, and view the clip I'm posting.  This past March, my mother and I flew to Vegas for the OMG Young Adult Cancer Survivor Conference, and it was an eye-opening experience for several reasons.  I was able to really see how many other teens and twenty-somethings had their lives totally effed up by cancer.  I even met my West Coast twin: a girl from California who was diagnosed with Ewings' Sarcoma as a senior in high school, received the same chemotherapy regimen, and radiation as opposed to surgery (complete with the knit cap showing only her bangs, and big-framed glasses...so  surreal!)

It was truly a learning experience to see this demographic of people come together to celebrate what we've achieved at such a young age, and share our struggles (both during treatment and currently).

But perhaps the most eye-opening aspect of the conference for me was the closing speech by Wendell Potter.  Wendell Potter is a former insurance company worker, who was head of communications at a top health insurance agency until 2008, when he left the business to speak out against it.
 
After cancer, I knew my future as far as healthcare was...uncertain to say the least.  But when Wendell Potter spoke about his reasons for leaving the business...specifically about a girl named Nataline Sarkisyan...I was downright scared, sad, and angry...Below is his speech at the summit.  I ask that you guys watch from 22:22 through 27:30..but by all means watch as much as you want.  It's very important to me, and to anyone with less than perfect health.

Nataline's story hit me hard...it made me so angry that her life was ultimately in the hands of an out-for-profit insurance company...OUR SYSTEM FAILED HER.  THE PRE-OBAMACARE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY FAILED SO, SO MANY PEOPLE, AND WILL CONTINUE TO SCREW PEOPLE OVER IF A DRASTIC CHANGE IS NOT MADE.  

I know I can't afford for Obamacare to be repealed.  If I relapse...when I need my kidney transplant...when I try to get my own insurance...what the f**k is going to happen to me?

I can honestly tell you that I'm voting for Obama because I'm downright scared.  It's not so much that I love everything Obama says or does (clearly not after last week's debate), or that I hate everything Mitt Romney stands for.  It's that I am absolutely terrified of what will happen to me if our healthcare system is not changed.  Everyone, everyone, everyone should be able to get proper healthcare.  

Nataline Sarkisyan should be alive today...and I really realized that I could easily be in the same boat.  There were several times when the insurance company got in the way of me getting a certain drug that would have made treatment easier.  There were times when I was in pain because we needed clearance from the insurance company before they could administer the drugs..all of these instances are minor compared to the denial of Nataline's liver transplant, but still...there has got to be a change.

And this is why no one could possibly convince me not to vote for Obama.  He knows that the healthcare system pre-reform is an abomination, and is doing everything he can to help the underdogs like me...like my twin in California...like Nataline.

The Sarkisyan family has started a foundation in Nataline's name in order to honor Nataline and raise awareness about healthcare reform.  Please check it out:
http://natalinesarkisyan.com/

Thanks for reading, peeps.  This is important to me, as I hope it is important to you.  If you're interested in Wendell Potter and his take on everything, check out his book Deadly Spin.  

Also.  If you feel the need to start a heated debate all over my comments section...that is fine.  But please know that this post is about raising awareness, not arguing...so I will not respond to any political debating on this post (here or on facebook).  Thanks.

Know the issues, and VOTE.

Jesse

"Free as my hair..." Thanks, Lady G.

    Once upon a time, there was a bald bitch named Jesse.  She got that way because of a C-word (both meanings are applicable).  One day she woke up in the hospital, looked down at her pillow and saw clumps of hair on her pillow, and said, "Oh Jesus, well that certainly is depressing."
   Thus she decided it was time to pull a Britney, and shave that shit off.  So across the hall she went with her dad and an electric razor.  It was a sad day, but as everyone had told her so many times..."it's just hair...it grows back."

"It's just hair...it grows back."  Hmmmm.  Pardon me, peeps, but are you F**KING KIDDING ME?????????????????????

DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG IT TAKES TO GROW A FREAKING HEAD OF HAIR????? A LONG TIME, BEYOTCHES.

Hair is a sensitive issue for people who have had cancer and lost their hair.  Many people make light of it, and make ignorant statements like the above.  But what they are not realizing is that hair is representative of identity, and to have it taken away...it's really quite traumatic.

I mean, it essentially gives you a new identity.  The identity of: "person with cancer"  "poor thing"  or the ever-popular "sucks to be her."  Once I lost my hair...I was "one of them."  

And that's when I really embraced hair as a means of expression.  It's why I got so many wigs along the way.  I'm sure you all remember 'The Ladies of Ewing's Sarcoma"  (and if you don't, here's my shameless plug where I tell you to look at my July postings)...I made the decision that I was not bald...I was simply a blank palette, that could be decorated any way I so choose.  Hair is art, if you let it be.

So yes, bald bitch Jesse got some spunky wigs and wore them with pride.  And then one day, the doctors and the annoying step-doctors (AKA med students who come in and nod in agreement with the doctors) told Jesse that she didn't have to be a big, bald, bodacious, blubbering, bully, bone-cancer bitch anymore (HOWS THAT FOR ALLITERATION, PEEPS), and set her free into the real world where you don't have to go to the hospital for a fever of 99.5.

And after 3 months, she had an entire 3 centimeters of hair. BECAUSE IT'S JUST HAIR, AND IT GROWS BACK RIGHT??????  Although it was becoming itchy, hot, and irritating to wear wigs over a thin layer of hair all the time...Jesse could not embrace her three centimeters of hair.

A few months later, her hair was 2 inches long...and people began to say, "why Jesse, you're hair is so lovely even at that short length, why don't you stop wearing wigs???"  She heard this comment daily from her peers, and wanted to agree with them...but she always came back to her wigs.  Always.

She said to herself one day.."Bitch.  What the eff is your problem.  Everyone likes your short hair, so why don't you???"  And the answer was simple: because it is not me.

I'm gonna talk in first person now, because I'm getting a migraine from trying to phrase things in third person.  Anyway, I don't feel like myself with short hair.  I had long, beautiful, thick brown hair before I lost it, and so I feel more like myself with longer hair.  I've tried changing the color...changing the style...I have a really cute bob that is great for some...but I just don't feel like me.

So I've realized fairly recently that it is becoming more and more trendy for hair to be ever-changing, different, and artistic.  Lady Gaga, (regardless of what some may think of her) is one of the gutsiest, most inspiring artists of our time, and paved the way for wigs to become a form of fashion.  Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry...so many people in popular culture use their hair as a way of expressing who they are, without limiting themselves to what's grown on their head.

 And I am not going to either.  I've decided that the thin, wispy hair that cancer is giving me (FYI, after 3 years off chemo, I'm still waiting for my hair to grow longer than my chin...BUT IT GROWS BACK RIGHT??????) is not good enough for me.  I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want with my hair...so I do.  I wear long extensions a lot, and sometimes I wear my hair in a bob with just a few shorter pieces to add volume...no matter what, I make sure I leave the house feeling beautiful.  Some people ask me why I don't just wear my real hair 24/7...and the answer is this:  I don't wear my hair for you.  I don't wear my hair so that you will like it.  I don't wear my hair to impress you.  I don't give a flying you-know-what how you feel about my hair.  I only care about what makes me feel beautiful..and what feels like me.

Before I depart, I will now depict some examples of people expressing themselves via their hair:

                                   'I like cupcakes and pink shit, is that so wrong?'

                                  'I'm not an extremely irritating child-star anymore'

                                                  'I'm crazy, please help me.'

                                  'Why wouldn't I tie my hair in a giant, lopsided bow?'



Until next time my friends,
Jesse


"I'll die living just as free as my hair."  ---Lady Gaga