Cold Weather Meal: Chili and Cornbread

Yes, I know. I haven't posted since sometime in November. No, I am not going to explain why. I just haven't is all. It's my blog and I'll post when I damn well feel like it!

Winter has *finally* descended upon us here in Georgia. With the temps down in the 30's and 40's (don't laugh, that absolutely qualifies as cold on the outskirts of "Hotlanta") we need something to help keep us warm and I know nothing better to do that than a nice big pot of chili accompanied by a slice of warm-from-the-oven cornbread and that's exactly what I've got simmering and baking right now.

According to my nephews and my husband I make the best chili around. Of course, as long as they like it, I honestly don't care if anyone else doesn't! Give it a try. Even if you don't think it's the best around, I expect you'll like it!


Even better, it's a quick and easy meal to whip up and easily feeds a crowd even when that crowd includes four hungry boys (and we all know how much they can eat!).

So, without further ado, here's how I make it:

Brown about 2-1/2 pounds of ground chili meat with 1-1/2 teaspoons kosher salt and 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper.

While meat is browning, add 3 cups chopped onion (or 2 cups chopped onion and 1 cup chopped celery) and about one rounded tablespoon of minced garlic (about 3 large cloves).

Drain the meat and add six 16 ounce cans of beans. I usually use half light red kidney and half dark red kidney beans, but today I decided to do two cans each of light red, dark red, and white kidney beans (white kidney beans are also known as cannellini beans). A mix of kidney beans and black beans and/or pinto beans is also tasty! I drain and rinse the beans before adding them, much to my mother's horror (she described the gooey stuff in the can with the beans as "good stuff;" to me, it's "bean snot."), but if you read the ingredients on the can, the bean snot is just salt and dextrose, neither of which is needed in our finished chili. A-a-nd now that I've called it "bean snot" twice, you'll be rinsing it off from now on, too. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! The first step in my plan for world domination is complete!

Errr....Um, where was I? Oh, yeah...chili.

Now for the spices and herbs: 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons chili powder (Alton Brown's recipe), 2 tablespoons dried parsley, 1 tablespoon dried cilantro, 1 teaspoon each sweet and smoked paprika, 1 teaspoon red pepper flake, 1/2 teaspoon ground Indian red pepper or cayenne pepper, and (now here's where I tell you to add things that will make you think I'm nuts, but do it anyway, trust me, it works!) 1/4 teaspoon each ground cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

Stir to evenly distribute the spices. Then add 14.5 ounces of low-sodium beef broth, one 28 ounce can diced tomatoes (do not drain!), and one 28 ounce can of plain tomato sauce. Stir in about one tablespoon of Cholula sauce (I just eyeball this so it may actually end up being closer to two) and two bay leaves, then cover and bring just to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for at least thirty minutes before serving.

Serve with sour cream, shredded Cheddar or Colby-Jack cheese and a generous slice of cheesey chile cornbread (keep reading for the recipe).

While the chili is simmering, make a pan of this delicious cheesey chile cornbread! Preheat oven to 425° F (220° C) and spray a 8x8 Pyrex dish with cooking spray.

This is a dead-simple recipe. Seriously, it'll take longer to gather all the ingredients than it will to mix up!

In a bowl, combine 1 cup each all-purpose flour and corn meal, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 2 tablespoon sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 beaten eggs, 1/4 cup corn/vegetable/canola oil, 1 cup whole milk, 1 drained 7 ounce can of corn with sweet peppers, 1 drained 4 ounce can of green chiles, and 2 cups shredded cheese (Cheddar, Colby-Jack, or "Mexican" shredded cheese mix).

Mix until all of the dry ingredients are thoroughly moistened. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 25 minutes. Cover with a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes.

If desired, sprinkle another cup of cheese over the top of the corn bread and place the pan under the broiler for about a minute to melt the cheese (my husband likes to break the cornbread up into his chili, so I didn't do that for this pan).

Hope you enjoy this meal as much as we do. Of course, as with most things I make, there's enough here to feed a small army or a few teenage boys!

Promise's Chili

Makes about 12 servings
Ingredients

2-1/2 lbs of ground chili meat 

3 cups chopped onion OR 2 cups chopped onion plus 1 cup chopped celery
3 lg cloves garlic, minced (abt 1 rounded tbsp)
6 16 oz cans of beans (dark red/light red kidney, white kidney, black, pinto) drained and rinsed

1 14.5 oz can low-sodium beef broth

1 28 oz can diced tomatoes

1 28 oz can plain tomato sauce

1 tbsp Cholula brand hot sauce

1-1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/4 c + 2 tbsp chili powder (Alton Brown's recipe)
2 tbsp dried parsley
1 tbsp dried cilantro
1 tsp each sweet and smoked paprika,
1 tsp red pepper flake
1/2 tsp ground Indian red pepper or cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground allspice
2 bay leaves

Directions

Brown meat with salt and pepper.
While meat is browning, add onion (or onion and celery) and garlic.
Drain the meat and add beans.
Add spices and herbs except bay leaves and stir to evenly distribute.
Then add beef broth, diced tomatoes (do not drain!), and plain tomato sauce.
Stir in Cholula sauce  and two bay leaves.
Cover and bring just to a boil.
Reduce heat and simmer for at least thirty minutes before serving.
Serve with sour cream, shredded Cheddar or Colby-Jack cheese and a generous slice of cheesey chile cornbread.

Cheesey Chile Cornbread

Ingredients
1 c all-purpose flour
1 c corn meal
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 beaten eggs
1/4 c corn/vegetable/canola oil
1 c whole milk
1 7 oz can of corn with sweet peppers, drained
1 4 oz can of green chiles, drained
2 c shredded cheese (Cheddar, Colby-Jack, or "Mexican" shredded cheese mix)

Directions
Preheat oven to 425° F (220° C) and spray a 8x8 Pyrex dish with cooking spray.
In a bowl, mix all ingredients with a spoon until all of the dry ingredients are thoroughly moistened. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Bake for 25 minutes.
Cover with a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes.
If desired, sprinkle another cup of cheese over the top of the corn bread and place the pan under the broiler for about a minute to melt the cheese.

Croque Monsieur

According to a Facebook post, today is National Sandwich Day. Good excuse to make sandwiches for dinner! But not just any kind of sandwich, tonight I made Croque Monsieurs. For those unfamiliar with this French-bistro staple, they're basically dressed up grilled ham and cheese, but this is absolutely a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Fortunately, they're not really all that complicated, well, for French food anyway.

What you'll need:

Soft butter (I used Land O'Lakes spreadable butter with canola)
Good bread (I used Italian bread from the bakery at our local Publix grocery store)
Ham deli meat (I used Boar's Head Virginia Ham)
Swiss cheese (I happened to have sliced on hand, but you can just use grated for both inside and on top) -- Gruyere and Emmentaler would be ideal, but you can use just about any kind of Swiss, I used Emmentaler and a block of regular generic Swiss for the top because I didn't feel like paying $10 for six ounces of cheese
All Purpose flour
White Pepper
Nutmeg
Ground Mustard Powder
Milk (neither the hubby nor I drink milk and we had heavy cream on hand, so I used it and it worked fine, so really milk, half-n-half, or cream can be used)

Step one: assemble sandwiches

Heat the ham (about 4 slices per sandwich for thin-sliced deli meat) in the microwave first
Butter one side of one slice of bread
Layer slices of Swiss or some of the grated Swiss and the ham and then top with butter slice of bread

Putting together sammies

Assembled sandwich ready to go into hot skillet

Step two: make the bechamel sauce

In a skillet over medium heat, melt one tablespoon of butter

Add one tablespoon of all purpose flour to the melted butter and whisk to combine

Cook flour-butter mixture for about 2 minutes

Add a pinch of nutmeg (freshly grated is always best) and about 1/4 tsp each of white pepper and ground mustard

Add one cup of milk (heat in microwave for 30 seconds before adding), whisking as you pour it into the skillet

Continue whisking until mixture thickens and is smooth

Remove from heat and set to side

Completed bechamel sauce

 Step three: cook sandwiches

Place sandwiches butter side down in a skillet that's been heated over medium-high heat.
Cook until golden and toasty. (I didn't get a pic of the sandwiches in the skillet, sorry!)
Transfer sandwiches to a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil, toasted side down.
Spread bechamel sauce (heaping tablespoonful) on the uncooked slice of bread.

Bechamel sauce topped sammies

 Then put a generous amount of grated Swiss cheese on top of the bechamel sauce.

Ready to broil!

 Place sandwiches on baking sheet in oven under the broiler and watch carefully. Broil until cheese is melted and bubbly.

Finished Croque Monsieurs

They will be way too hot to eat when they first come out of the oven, so let them cool for a couple minutes so you don't burn your mouth! I do recommend slicing on the diagonal to make them easier to eat.

I served these with Terra Exotic Potato Chips (normally I'd make my own Rosemary and Black Pepper Red Skin Potato Chips, but I didn't feel up to that today) and salads (basic garden for the hubby, salad of cucumber, red bell pepper, raw green beans, and tomato in vinaigrette for me).

Enjoy!

Radioactive

Had my third PET scan today. My first one was just before my hysterectomy and my second was just before I started chemo. This one will hopefully confirm what the CA-125* numbers are showing: that the chemotherapy has worked and I am in remission. I still have one cycle of chemo to complete (that's three sessions) and, then, hopefully, that will be it. I'll find out the results of today's scan at my oncology appointment on Wednesday.

As far as medical tests and exams go, PET scans are middling-annoying. You have to eat a low-carbohydrate diet the day before and can't have anything the day of other than water. This is because of the tracer that they give you for the exam. They establish an IV (if you have a port they use that) and inject radioactive glucose. If your blood glucose is over 160, they can't do the test because the tracer won't show up correctly. Cancer cells suck up glucose at a faster rate than normal body cells do, so they light up on the screen when they scan you with the CT machine. You rest for an hour after the tracer is injected to give it a chance to be taken up by cells and then you get to lie still in the scanning machine for about half an hour. So, you're hungry and have to spend an hour and a half being completely still, which is why it's not a completely non-annoying test to have done. It certainly could be worse, though!

The first two times I had the test performed, I experienced some mild anxiety during the scanning. I'm not normally someone who has a problem with claustrophobia, but being in that long tube can (and does) get to anybody. This time I didn't have that problem. I was so deeply engrossed in my thoughts that the test itself went by fairly quickly. The worst part was that my hands got icy cold! If I ever have to have another, I'm going to take gloves to wear!

The tracer has a very short half-life, so it's completely broken down and expelled from the body within 24 hours. But, for the time being, I'm very very mildly radioactive. Not that you can tell. Disappointingly, it doesn't make your pee glow or anything cool like that. That would be awesome. They should totally add something to the tracer that makes your pee glow. It would make dealing with the annoying bits totally worth it.

*Marker in the blood that is indicative of ovarian cancer.

Halloween's Not Evil

So, today's the first of November and I said I was going to attempt to post every day this month. This is going to be interesting!

Yesterday was Halloween. I didn't feel up to going all-out this year, so I didn't decorate and I didn't really dress up (I popped on one of my wigs and that was that). I did hand out treats to the few kids that showed (plea to world: please come our house, Trick-or-Treaters!), but it was overall pretty low-key around here.

Here's the thing: there are people out there who don't celebrate Halloween because "it's not a Christian holiday" or "it's based on a pagan holiday" or the most insane of all "it's Satan's birthday." Let me just say right now that that is patently STUPID (if you believe the last one, you are truly an idiot). If you know anything about the history and development of Christianity, then you know that pretty much the entire religion is based on "pagan" traditions. If this is something you don't know and you consider yourself a Christian, please, please, please for the love that is all good in this world, go read a book about the history of Christianity! Karen Armstrong's A History of God is a good place to start. After that read Bart D. Ehrman's Lost Christianities, Lost  Scriptures, and How Jesus Became God. Not knowing the history of the faith in which you purport to believe is pretty pathetic.

It's actually pretty scary to me that so many modern-day evangelicals are being led to believe that the particular version of Christianity being practiced at their individual church is 1) the only valid version and 2) is "traditional" Christianity (it is neither).

Halloween in its current incarnation is fairly removed from it's Christian roots and even further removed from ancient "pagan" traditions. Obviously, it's NOT "Satan's birthday." That particular bit of ridiculousness was dreamed up in the 1950s by some nutcase. Halloween's been around quite a bit longer than that. Today's Halloween is a chance to have fun by dressing up, either as a favorite character or as something "scary," and an excuse to indulge in candy-eating and scary movie-watching (if you're into that sort of thing, personally I am not a fan of scary movies, candy, however, is delicious). There's no deeper meaning behind any of those traditions (yes, they have historical roots in medieval traditions and superstitions which have even older historical roots, so what? as they exist today, they are simply FUN). It really is just as superficial as it seems: something that we do that's actually pretty silly, but is a lot of fun and is engaged in solely because it's fun. Actually, that's a damn good reason to do just about anything.

If you're against Halloween, you're against something incredibly innocent. And if you're against Halloween, but you celebrate Christmas complete with a tree, Santa, a feast of some sort, then you are either a hypocrite or  incredibly ignorant. However, if you don't celebrate any holidays that aren't explicitly in the Bible because you have been led to believe that that is the "correct" way to be Christian, then, you are probably a pretty damn boring person to be around and you've been seriously misled by someone who doesn't have a good understanding of  nor a solid foundational knowledge of Christianity. I could go on more about that, but I'm not going to, at least not now.

Halloween's not evil. It never has been. It's a night of harmless fun. Well, okay, maybe candy is a little evil. Delicious, delicious evil.

Bacon Causes Cancer (But So Does Everything Else)

In case you've had your head in the sand all week (hello ostriches!), it has been determined by some researchers that bacon is VERY VERY BAD for you. If you eat it every day, your risk of colon cancer goes up. Now, it doesn't go up a huge amount and the reports don't say how much you can counter the effect with other healthy habits, such as eating plenty of roughage, that are known to decrease colon cancer risk (knowing what I know thanks to nursing school, I'm willing to bet future BLTs that the risk from eating bacon and other "processed" meats is at least offset in an equal amount by a diet that is overall plentiful in fresh fruits and veg and whole grains), but that, of course, didn't stop every news outlet out there from publishing alarmist articles and it didn't stop people from freaking the fuck out. I mean, of course they did. This BACON we're talking about. Bacon is delicious and, especially on the internet, we're obsessed with the stuff. Still, by the way some people have reacted, you'd have though you told them they could never, ever eat it ever again and that every bite of it they've ever had has doomed them to die a horrible death from their colons being eaten away by little monsters with nasty, gnarly, very sharp teeth. Some of that is just people being drama queens for the sake of being drama queens (because internet). A lot of it has to do with the fact that PEOPLE ARE FUCKING STUPID.

And people are especially fucking stupid when it comes to science, medicine, and cancer.

I get it. cancer's scary. I know. I have cancer and it scares the shit out of me that I have it. Everyone wants to not ever get cancer.

BUT

There isn't any way to 100% guarantee you won't get cancer. You can do everything "right" and still get cancer. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use common sense and take reasonable precautions. It means you shouldn't freak out and try to eliminate everything that has the potential to cause cancer. That's impossible to do, won't work, and will make you miserable. Besides doing reasonable things (like not smoking, using protection from the sun, eating a generally healthy diet, etc), the best thing you can do is to get regular health check-ups and screenings for the cancers that can be screened for and to get yourself seen and checked out if anything seems off. This is extremely important because catching cancer early is the best chance you have of beating it.

People seem to have this weird idea that cancer isn't curable, but it is. We've all seen and heard the joke line that scientists have discovered such-and-such, but "still no cure for cancer." Well, that's a fallacy. There IS a cure for cancer. I'm currently undergoing it. It generally involves some combination of surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation. I have a few chemotherapy sessions to undergo, but everything is already pointing to me being in remission (they can't declare that until my post-treatment PET scan comes back clean and I've completed all of my rounds of chemo). Remission isn't considered cured, though. You have to stay in remission for five years first. More people who have some kind of cancer are cured than not (when you consider all forms of cancer together).

But, you're thinking, lots of people still die of cancer. If we'd truly cured it, no one would ever die of it.

And, congratulations, you're thinking stupidly.

There's lots of things that we can cure that people still die of. Hell, people still die from the fucking flu and we have a vaccine that can largely prevent people from even getting the flu.

The fact that we know how to treat cancer, rather successfully (even if the treatments themselves make you absofuckinglutely miserable, which seems to be one of the biggest reasons people find current treatment methods suspect, which, do I need to say it, is fucking stupid), is one of the reasons I get so pissed off at people who tell me to check out alternative treatments (like hemp oil). Doctors are in this to save lives. If a treatment is effective, they're going to use it, despite what conspiracy nuts say. By the very virtue that my highly-regarded, renowned oncologist isn't telling me to use whatever miracle cure it is you read about somewhere I know that it's a load of shit, a big wagon-load full of smelly, smelly shit.

Maybe it's because I'd made it most of the way through nursing school before my diagnosis, but I've never once not had complete faith in my oncologist or that the surgery he performed and the chemo he prescribed would get rid of my cancer. Of course, I was very, very, very lucky that my cancer was found when it was. What makes ovarian cancer have such horrible survivor rates is the fact that it is so rarely found in the early stages (this has a lot to do with the fact that there's no standard screening process like there is for breast and prostate cancers and that the symptoms themselves are so varied and so vague). For any cancer that has poor survivor rates, that is usually the reason. It has nothing to do with current treatments being ineffective and everything to do with what cancer is. 

Cancer is the body's normal growth process run amok. Cancer is cells in the body achieving what so many of us dream of--immortality--but, in a ironic twist, left unchecked causes death instead. Cancer cells start out as normal cells and then something causes them to stop doing whatever job it is that that cell is supposed to do and just grows and replicates and nothing else. And the thing that tells normal cells that they've gotten too old to function at optimum so it's time to die and be recycled is turned off, so they don't stop growing and replicating. Cancer cells can arise from any type of cell in your body. In fact, cancer cells DO arise in your body all the time. Our amazing immune systems are just normally able to kill these individual cells and get rid of them before they have a chance to cause problems. But, if you're really unlucky, one of these cells becomes two becomes three becomes a clump of cancer cells becomes a tumor with it's own blood supply and that's when you've got a problem. If cells from that tumor break off and go start tumors in other parts of the body, then you've a got a really big problem. 

Simply put, the more of these misbehaving cells you have in the body, the fewer cells you have that are doing what they are supposed to do, and the harder it is to get rid of the bad ones. And cancer cells are greedy little buggers. They can and will rob all of your normal cells of any and everything your cells need to do what they do (i.e. keep you alive).

So, other than cutting the tumors out, how do we get rid of these bad cells? That's where chemotherapy and radiation come in. Radiation specifically targets a tumor or clump of cancer cells and kills them. Chemotherapy works by killing cells that divide and replicate quickly. The reason chemo makes you so sick is that it doesn't just kill off the cancer cells. The cancer cells are the most rapidly dividing and replicating cells, but other body cells divide and replicate quickly as part of their normal cell function. Chiefly your bone marrow (which makes your blood), your blood, and your skin cells (this includes your nails, hair, and the lining of your entire digestive system from your lips right through to your anus) are short-lived and thus divide and replicate faster than the cells of your internal organs. If you think about what the side-effects of chemo are and how it affects the body, it makes complete sense that it leads to hair loss, skin issues, and digestive issues. 

Fortunately, there are wonderful medications that they give you now alongside the chemo that reduce the worst of these symptoms. If your white blood cell count goes down too much, there's medicine to help stimulate the body's production of those cells. If your red blood cell count goes down too much, they give you donated red blood cells. 

So, yeah. Cancer sucks. Cancer's scary. Everyone wants to never, ever get cancer. And, yes, cancer can be a death sentence. But it isn't always a death sentence. For an increasing number of people, it's a the next six to twelve months are really really going to suck big time but then you'll be able to go back to your regularly scheduled life sentence. So, maybe eat a little less bacon and a few more pieces of fresh fruit, but definitely, definitely, stop freaking the fuck out every time you see or hear the "C" word and educate yourself so you aren't one of the stupids.

Cancer is Boring

Okay I knew it been a while since I'd written and posted, but I didn't realize it had been this long. Yeah, I'm a very inconsistent blogger, but I've got cancer. That gives me a pass. For, well, pretty much any and everything.

I'm nearly to the end of my chemo--one session left of cycle five and then it's on to the sixth and final cycle. I've gotten so used to Wednesday being my chemo day that it's going to be weird not to spend one day every week an hour from home hooked up to a bunch of bags of drugs. That's not to say I'm going to miss it!

So, what have I been doing with all my time, since I clearly haven't been writing? Well, to be honest, not much. Cancer is a huge waste of one's time. You have all this time that you could be doing things, but you don't feel well enough to do any of them. I wish I could have used this time to do the things that I never have time to do. I have a craft room stuffed full of projects I could be working on. I could've sewed my niece an entire princess wardrobe. I could've read dozens of books. I could have watched a lot of television and movies. Mostly, I've slept and aimlessly poked around the internet. It's really hard to get motivated to do anything when you are tired and in pain and in order to make the pain go away you take medicine that makes you not really capable of doing anything but lying around and all of that combined means your attention span is like, five minutes, max. 

But that's not even the worst part. The worst part is the insomnia. Ugh. So then you're exhausted and loopy and awake and it just sucks big hairy donkey balls. 

I'm bored. Really, really, really bored. All the damn time. But I don't have the energy to do anything to alleviate the boredom. I'd hoped having a blog would help with that, but, well, it doesn't when I don't feel well enough or am too drugged up on painkillers to write anything coherent.

So, that's my super exciting life with cancer right now. 

Bits 'n Bobs

First: An apology for the little hiatus. I have been suffering the adverse effects of having low hemoglobin. In other words, I didn't have enough iron in my blood. In other other words, I'm anemic. As a result, I've been fatigued, exhausted, dragging around barely functioning. Mostly I've been sleeping, like 16 or more hours a day. I'd think of things to write about here, but just not have the energy to get out my laptop and type it out. Extreme fatigue = no posts. I need to start writing ahead to prevent this problem in the future. And that leads me into....

Second: NaNoWriMo is fast approaching. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to try to write a novel (first draft) start to finish all during the month of November. For more information about NaNoWriMo itself, go to nanowrimo.org
Some of you may know that I've had an epic historical fantasy novel kicking around inside my head for the better part of 12 years now. I hope to one day actually write that beast, but 2015 is not the year for that. Rather, in the spirit of NaNoWriMo I am going to attempt to write and post a blog entry every day during the month of November, all 30 days. This will give me the opportunity to start writing about subjects (other than cancer) that are important to me. If you have a question you'd like me to answer or a subject you'd like to see me write about, please post it in the comments!

Third: Additional things people have said to me or about cancer that I find completely annoying and I would like it very much if people would stop.

• "You're going to be such an amazing nurse now." "This is going to make you a better nurse." And other variations on this theme.

Sadly, this one I hear more from other nurses than  from the general population. I get what they are trying to say (that I'll have a unique perspective from having been a patient, never mind the fact that this isn't my first rodeo: in my 38 years I've racked up 11 surgical procedures, I have plenty of experience being a patient, I really don't need more), but the way it is stated implies that I wasn't a good nurse before. I know that to not be true. Connecting with patients (and their families) is actually one of my strong suits. That element of caring can't be taught, but it's extremely important as it improves patient outcomes and patient compliance. It also simply makes things easier on you and the patient if you get along well. I get that the nurses are also trying to take a senseless situation and give it some meaning. Maybe some people find that comforting. I don't. I just think it's a silly thing to do. As I've said before, there is no greater meaning or purpose in me getting cancer. It's simply a nasty thing that some people get, just like with any other disease. There is no lesson to be learned, no information to be gleaned, it just is.

• "My mom died of cancer. With her lifestyle it wasn't a surprise at all." 
• "If your faith was stronger you'd never have gotten cancer/your cancer would be cured already."
• "If you'd just done X, Y, Z, you wouldn't have caught cancer." 

Yes, there are certain lifestyle and dietary choices that can increase or decrease your chances of getting certain cancers. That doesn't make the cancer the fault of the patient. This is especially true of women's gynecological cancers. Even with regular care via an OBGYN, few sexual partners, monogamous relationships, and no history of sexually transmitted infections, I developed ovarian cancer. There's nothing I could have done to prevent it and nothing I could do to cause a cure to spontaneously happen. Faith and prayer can help you get through the dark days of your cancer treatment, but to make the above statement to someone is beyond cruel. If you say that to someone, you are a bad, bad person. Oh, in case it isn't blatantly obvious, you can't "catch" cancer. It's not a virus or a bacteria spread from person to person.

• Coughing, continuously within a five food radius of me, without covering your mouth. And, especially, doing so when you know my white blood cell count is critically low.

I don't care if it's "just allergies," cover your damn mouth, you're spraying germs everywhere!


Fourth. I don't actually have a fourth. I just can't figure out a good outro for this entry. So I guess thi