by Carolyn Thomas
Dear Heart Sisters reader,
“Are you okay? I look for your posts every Sunday and I haven’t seen any in a while…or maybe I fell off your email list?! Anyway, I hope you’re doing well. And I miss your snarky and informative commentary.”
That was a recent message sent to me from Susan, one of my regular Heart Sisters readers. Like many of you, she’d noticed that yet another Sunday morning had come and gone without a Heart Sisters article link in her inbox.
I had two answers to her “Are you okay?” query:
1. YES! I am okay physically, a bit better day by day, since nine months of the worst chemotherapy-induced side effects are fading. (Amazing how much better I started to feel once the chemo nurses stopped pumping toxic drugs into my body. (Oh! There’s that snark that Susan likes! ) 😉
I’ll still be in the Chemo Room every three weeks for 11 more rounds, this time with only one immunotherapy drug and a promise of fewer side effects. And all my scans. lab work and post-mastectomy pathology reports show that the toxic drugs were indeed working their magic. But as a quality-of-life issue, there’s no sugar-coating how dreadful my chemo-induced symptoms were and how sick I felt.
I hate cancer!!
2. NO! I am NOT OKAY because I am no longer able to continue writing my Sunday morning posts – entirely due to technical obstacles that I’m too exhausted to overcome or even explain after months of crazy-making effort.I haven’t figured out yet how to finish and get this message to you, but I’ll try to do it .
(Want more snark? Thank you WordPress for replacing your user-friendly Classic Editor with the basically useless Block Editor!)
It’s a challenge for any writer – even the “informative” ones like Susan appreciates – to do a good job when feeling horrible. Yet I was able to continue writing because my Heart Sisters posts are truly a labour of love for me – and a surprisingly effective distraction when I am feeling horrible. I highly recommend blogging (or, even better, grandbabies!) if you’re seeking effective distractions from your medical crises.
But ongoing tech “updates” over at WordPress (the company that has hosted Heart Sisters since I launched it in 2009 as a freshly-diagnosed heart patient) no longer support what was known as our original Classic Editor option in favour of what they call the “improved” Block Editor. Although I and many other bloggers have lobbied (translation: begged!) WordPress Tech Support staff for years to pleeeease bring back the user-friendly Classic Editor, this will not happen, and it’s getting worse.
As my four-year old grandson Zachary once told me: when I asked him to pick up his toys:
“Baba, I don’t want to do things that I don’t want to do!”
I agree, Zack! That’s exactly how I feel too! I have a very limited number of hours left on this earth (just as every one of you have, too) and I do not want to waste any more of them trying out endless suggestions to “fix” my tech issues.
A reminder for longtime Heart Sisters readers:
My Heart Sisters blog is still accessible 24/7. You can read and comment on any of the 900+ articles I’ve written, and I can respond. One of my readers just told me that she plans re-read all of those posts, starting with 2009. If you prefer specific topics on women and heart disease, just click on The Topics categories on the right-hand column on your screen.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to somehow find a way to send this post out to you today, but I’ll certainly try. I may start a new site – hosted by a different provider, and one that might be able to ‘migrate’ thousands of my email subscribers with me. If that can’t happen, please keep Googling “Heart Sisters” until you track me down!
Thank you for reading and responding and supporting my Heart Sisters project.
love,
Carolyn
As always, I’ll leave a plug for my book:
NOTE FROM CAROLYN: I wrote more about becoming a patient (no matter the diagnosis!) in my book, “A Woman’s Guide to Living with Heart Disease”. You can ask for it at your local library or favourite bookshop ( please support your independent booksellers) or order it online (paperback, hardcover or e-book) at Amazon– or order it directly from my publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press (use their code HTWN to save 30% off the list price).
♥
Heart Sisters 