My favorite aunt, Maria, who lives in Munich, Germany turned ninety-five on January 26th. The mayor of Munich sent her a wonderful gift box. According to my aunt, once citizens reach a certain vintage that’s something the mayor’s office does.

Aunt Maria was very excited about the box itself, with an image of her town’s gothic city hall on the lid. Even better, the gift was from the Dallmayr Delicatessen, which caters to über-expensive tastes. Champagne, chocolates, and cheeses were among the many goodies packed inside.

I’m happy for my aunt and glad that everything is going well for her. In 2007, when I last visited Germany, I had a chance to talk with her about her experiences during World War II. She told me many interesting tales. A few have made it into my novel, The Still Voice, in one fashion or another.

I remember recording her stories as we sat on the patio of the Angermaier restaurant in Rottach-Egern, Bavaria. The restaurant is her favorite and she celebrated her ninety-fifth there this week. My cousin emailed pictures he took of the day. How different it looks covered in snow.

Aunt Maria, daughter-in-law Heidi, daughter Ingrid in front of Angermaier

When aunt Maria was fourteen, she lived with her family in Wiesbaden. Word went out to the schools from the city’s Staatstheater (opera house) that youngsters were needed for the Kinderchor, or children’s choir. My aunt and another girl were chosen by their music teacher for their beautiful voices. Aunt Maria is proud that the opera’s general director sat in on the Kinderchor during rehearsal. He wanted to make sure he approved of all the voices under his direction.

My aunt sang in such productions as Hansel and Gretel, Peterchens Mondfahrt, and Der Evangelimann. Once, she got paid twenty-five marks for a performance and bought her mother a coat. Aunt Maria would’ve loved to have gone on with her career. But voice training lessons were beyond the family’s means at the time. I can still see her baking in her kitchen and singing away. Her father used to call her “theater doll,” because she loved all things theatrical.

Aunt Maria was twenty-nine and living in the country when the Wiesbaden Staatstheater suffered damage in a terrible bombing on February 2, 1945. In the fall of 1947 the opera house finally reopened. City Mayor Hans Redlhammer acknowledged the citizens’ attachment to the building and proclaimed its revival a symbol of the city’s recovery. I know the restoration contributed to aunt Maria’s emotional recovery, too.

Just when I’d gotten used to Facebook and Twitter, along comes something completely different. It’s called a “vook” and is exactly what one would expect it to be--a combination of video and book. The product is a multimedia software application produced by a company of the same name. The first offering is a “cookvook” that displays text along with forty-five short videos of cooks preparing their favorite dishes.

Call me a traditionalist, but I cannot see myself surrounded by kindles, vooks, and “iDevices.” I much prefer the regular old book with its tantalizing title, alluring promotional jacket, and printed words coming alive on the page.

They say you can tell a lot about someone by what they read. On my desk right now I’m surrounded by four planning guides for Greece. I have a book lent me by my father called Ludicrous Laws & Mindless Misdemeanors--The Silliest Lawsuits and Unruliest Rulings of All Times. I’ve been meaning to read Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor, so that’s here. A friend lent me a paperback called The Know-It-All.

The Know-It-All is interesting. It’s non-fiction and is an account of one man’s reading of the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica from a-ak through Zywiec. There is much humor in the account. Somewhere along the line the author and his wife find time to get pregnant. The baby is born after the reading is done. The book is fun and does not need to be read from A to Zed.

Then there’s A Thousand Splendid Suns by the author of Kite Runner, which I loved. I started to read A Thousand Splendid Suns but have set it aside. I read through chapter seven, at the end of which the main character Mariam is presented in marriage to a total stranger. She’s fifteen years old. Her new husband is in his mid forties. Mariam is a harami, the illegitimate progeny of a lowly stone carver’s daughter and a rich man married to three wives. I read to chapter seven when I remembered what the Taliban did to “fallen” women, those who are prostitutes, illegitimate, or have committed a crime. Sure enough, on page 327 Mariam is in the bed of a pickup truck on its way to Kabul’s Ghazi Sport stadium. On page 329 she kneels in her burqa in front of a male member of the Taliban, bows her head one last time, and is shot to death.

I admit to skipping around in the book. It’s something I often do, check the ending to see whether I can deduce how the book will be written to lead up to it. I skim to see how relationships are established, what motives are worked in. When the plot seems fairly linear and predictable, I will put a book away. A Thousand Splendid Suns was that, linear and predictable. But that’s not why I did not finish it. I was becoming emotionally invested in Mariam. I could not bear to read about her hard life, her sad end. I remember what the Taliban has done to Afghan women.

“The Oak Tree”

A mighty wind blew night and day.
It stole the oak tree’s leaves away,
Then snapped its boughs
and pulled its bark
until the oak was tired and stark.
But still the oak tree held its ground
while other trees fell all around . . .

The weary wind gave up and spoke,
“How can you still be standing, Oak?”
The oak tree said, “I know that you
can break each branch of mine in two,
carry every leaf away,
shake my limbs, and make me sway.
But I have roots stretched in the earth,
growing stronger since my birth.
You’ll never touch them, for you see,
they are the deepest part of me.
Until today, I wasn’t sure
of just how much I could endure.
But now I’ve found, with thanks to you,
I’m stronger than I ever knew.”

This inspiring message, believe it or not, was on a Hallmark greeting card given to me by my mother. Mom added an inspirational message of her own, and made my day.

There’s always something to worry about. Just a few weeks shy of my first radiation treatment, comes this article in the Sunday New York Times: “A Lifesaving Tool Turned Deadly--Radiation Offers Powerful New Cures, and Ways to do Harm.”

The gist of the article is that operators of radiation machinery can rely too heavily on the computer-controlled devices. When the software acts up, improper data is fed in, or warning signals are given out by the system, operators don’t always check for, or catch, the mistakes. A review of state records in New York found there were 621 radiation mistakes from January 2001 to January 2009. The errors included: wrong dose given, wrong patient treated, the beams missed all or part of the intended target.

The personal stories cited in the article included two where egregious errors were committed. One resulted in a man’s head and neck being over-radiated. He died of his horrible injuries after two years of suffering. The second left a breast cancer patient with a burning, gaping hole in her chest. She too died in terrible pain.

Even when everything is done properly, Dr. John J. Feldmeier, a radiation oncologist at the University of Toledo and a leading authority on radiation injuries, estimates that one in twenty patients will suffer injuries, according to the Times piece. Most of these are “normal complications.”

I wonder whether these complications include the organ damage and radiation-induced cancer that can be caused and might not show up for decades.

A diagram of an Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (I.M.R.T.) machine accompanies the Times story. The image is daunting. The individual silhouetted on the table looks like a tiny doll being swallowed by an enormous maw. The I.M.R.T. machine is likely not the type that will be used for my treatment. However, I do like to engage in anticipatory worrying.

I’ve checked the http://www.breastcancer.org/ web site to find out more about radiation therapy. Online, the doctors suggest asking questions I would never have thought of. A sample: Does the radiation oncologist use 3-dimensional treatment planning systems? Are there certified physicists involved with the planning? Is there a certified dosimetrist?

I had to look up “dosimetrist.” Turns out it’s just like it sounds. A dosimetrist, according to http://www.cancer.gov/, “determines the proper radiation dose for treatment.”

And we’ll leave it there for now.

The sun is trying to come out over Northern California. A valiant, though faint, effort following a week of wicked storms. My father drove me to my third chemotherapy treatment in a downpour this past Tuesday. (I’ve learned the hospital calls these treatments “infusions.” I must get with the jargon here.)

It had to be a labor of love, my father’s driving through sheets of rain from his hometown fifteen miles away. Then, too, sitting and waiting through my four-hour infusion can’t have been fun. I would think, since he’s been through his own chemotherapy at the HMO we belong to, he’d run in the opposite direction. Actually, I think he likes to flirt with the nurses. He knows them all.

One of the oncology nurses is a neighbor of mine. I reminded her that, when she moved in across the street and told me of her profession, I said, “Ew,” and gave a little shudder. She nodded. “And now,” she said, “here we are.” Yes indeed, here we are.

“One day soon, this will all be a blip on the radar,” my nurse-neighbor told me before my first infusion in early December 2009. This week, my sister sent me a card with much the same sentiment. “One day soon, this will be a memory,” she wrote. One day . . . soon.

The memory plays interesting tricks. A friend told me how well she’d handled her own chemotherapy for breast cancer some years ago. Days later she confided that she’d been so weak at one juncture, she’d needed a blood transfusion. Ah yes, someday soon . . .

I know I make an impatient patient. But being in the middle of this cure for cancer is painful, sad, and all consuming. There is no way to dress it up. One day soon cannot come soon enough.

When I first told people about my breast cancer diagnosis, waves of wonderful things arrived in my home unbidden. There were cards, flowers, a cookie bouquet, and a food basket. As time went on, there were gifts of homemade soup and a housecleaning, given by a neighbor and friend. Caps, first knitted by one friend, then another, then purchased by a man who works with my father at Guide Dogs for the Blind appeared. I especially like the cap from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It even fits!

Books about cancer arrived on my doorstep and appeared in my mailbox from out-of-state. My initial reaction to these was, “I’m living this. Why would I want to read about it?” The question was quickly answered as I wanted information about treatments, side effects, and how to read a pathology report. Two of the books are well-thumbed through, another remains to be explored.

There is a book, one I picked up at my HMO shortly after my diagnosis, that I set aside and did not intend to read. It’s title, “I flunked my Mammogram!”--in pink and complete with exclamation point--was just too off-putting. It seemed to trivialize such a devastating disease. I’ve since picked it up and determined it must be intended for the younger reader. It lays out topics in a basic, clear form. There is a page for notes after major sections.

“I flunked my Mammogram!” has this to say under the heading What Exactly is Cancer?: “In its simplest terms, a cancer cell is a cell that just doesn’t know when to stop dividing. All cells have a natural lifespan, but sometimes a cell just won’t die when it’s time is up. The cell may have been altered by some outside factor, or in the case of inherited cancers, a mutation to its genetic code may have been passed down from earlier generations, causing it to keep dividing and growing. Cancer just doesn’t appear overnight; it takes years to develop to a detectable stage.”

Under the heading of Prevention?, the mammogram flunking book says breast cancer cannot be prevented. “Not yet, and maybe never.” However, researchers are focusing on diet and on specific vitamins and minerals that appear to have a “cancer-preventive effect.” Exercise is again recommended. The book notes that studies have shown that regular exercise can lower estrogen levels. Estrogen has been linked to breast cancer. “Fat cells store estrogen. The less fat you carry, the less estrogen you store--and the less potential stimulation of breast cancer cells.”

So the shunned “I flunked my Mammogram!” book, authored by Dr. Ernie Bodai, MD, and Richard A. Zmuda, has its place. Maybe it’s just the title that wants changing.

When my father had chemotherapy years ago, he grew thinner and thinner. He still is thin, to this day. At the time of his treatment for colon cancer he said food “tasted like cardboard.” He had to force himself to eat.

When I heard I’d need chemotherapy, I’d hoped for a little weight loss. I could stand to lose a few pounds. I haven’t lost a single one. My appetite is still there, though I’m not sure why. Most foods have a bitter aftertaste to them. This past weekend I made fresh crab, homemade cocktail sauce, an accompanying salad with avocado, bell pepper, and crab meat. Such work. Such a wonderful meal. Such a bitter, nothing taste to the crab. I wondered why this was so and looked online.

From www.cancersupportivecare.com/diet comes this answer to the question about food tasting different: “Both smell receptor and taste bud cells are rapidly dividing cells. Many cancer chemotherapy agents act by killing off rapidly dividing cells, including these receptor cells. Bitter and metallic tastes are intensified possibly causing food aversions whereas sweet tastes tend to be tolerated well. Metallic and bitter tastes are usually perceived in foods such as meat (from the amino acids) and flavors like soy sauce.”

The web site offers some recommendations to enhance the flavor of food while undergoing chemotherapy. Suggestions include:
--Sweeten food with healthy alternatives such as fruit juices.
--Use fruit sauces with meats.
--Serve fruit nectars with meals.
--Enhance the flavor of meat, chicken or fish by marinating with fruit juice or sweet wine. Serve with a fruit sauce, such as mango or sweetened cranberry sauce.
--Try colder foods to eliminate smells. Cold foods can be good sources of protein and calories.

Somehow, I cannot see serving fish with a fruit sauce. But the other suggestions are definitely worth a try.

It’s taken about two months for me to go from believing the organics label is simply a way for grocers to charge more, and the health aids label is just a “buncha bunk,” to becoming a convert. All right, I’m not totally converted. But my feet are pointed in that direction.

It started with the nurse educator at my HMO who told me that most toothpastes contain alcohol. She recommended some that are alcohol-free and suggested teas to aid with digestion.

From there, I looked for foods to build up the white blood cell count in order to fight colds and infection. I found a few of these: beef, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, pumpkin, carrots, and shitake mushrooms.

The best discovery was free-range chicken eggs. Just two of these makes a fluffy omelet so large it’s hard to consume in one sitting. My husband also brought home a second type--brown, fertilized eggs--this weekend. He cracked a couple of them open for breakfast and said, “Whoops, there’s a feather. Here comes the beak.” Funny man, my husband.

We wondered whether fertilized eggs are consumable. Here’s what http://www.sciencebuzz.org/ had to say: “If an egg has been fertilized, then the embryo inside has already divided several times but remains a group of unspecialized cells (at the time the egg is laid).” So yes, a fertilized egg is edible.

I’m not so convinced when it comes to the organic lettuces from the supermarket. The pre-washed spinach and the butter lettuce packaged in plastic, complete with roots, tastes the same to me as the “regular” lettuce.

A restaurant I discovered in Oakland, Calif. last summer served salad with the most wonderful lettuce. According to the restaurant, some nice ones can be had from these organizations, which often sell through farmers markets: Coke Farm, Star Route Farms, Blue Heron Farms.

I'm liking the "raw" sugar over the refined white sugar. It seems to sweeten without being too sweet. And I am a fan of milk soaps, another new find. These help keep the skin from drying out, though the scent is a little odd.

It is fun and interesting to try these new things, whether or not they become a permanent part of our lives. I’m looking forward to discovering more. Please comment on this blog if you’ve found some healthy foods you especially love.

In the final chapter of their book, Breast Cancer - The Complete Guide, doctors Yashar Hirshaut and Peter I. Pressman address the social issues of breast cancer. I’ve excerpted a few of their observations in today’s blog because they speak to my heart.

The authors open the chapter with these questions: “If, as we have learned, one out of eight women in America will develop breast cancer during her lifetime, why aren’t we doing more about it? Why isn’t this a primary national concern? Why aren’t more effort and more money being put into the problem?”

According to the authors, in 2003 the National Cancer Institute (NCI) had a budget of $536 million for breast cancer research, and the Department of Defense (DOD) allocation was $150 million. Since then the NCI’s budget has increased only slightly and the DOD allocation has dipped. “Despite the significant funds (for breast cancer research) it remains under funded . . . Each year, innovative research proposals are submitted to the NCI for approval. Of those accepted as worthy of support, there is at present only enough money to fund twenty percent. Each grant not funded represents an opportunity lost.”

The role that exposure to toxic agents in our environment may play in causing breast cancer is attracting scientific interest and funding. According to the authors, one causative factor being reinvestigated is a “possible link between breast cancer and insecticide residues that may have entered the food chain and water supply.”

The authors, whose book was published in 2008, had this to say about mammography. “More women than ever are aware of the importance of following an early-detection screening plan: regular mammograms supplemented by breast self-examination and an annual examination by a physician. The proportion of women over forty who get regular mammograms has increased, but we still have not reached all women who should be screened.”

According to the doctors, breast cancer research should have “higher government priorities for funding.” The National Breast Cancer Coalition, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is especially effective in articulating the need for public action. Also effective are the efforts of the Susan G. Komen Foundation in Dallas, Texas, which has become a “major nongovernmental source of breast cancer research funding.” The foundation’s website can be found at: http://www.komen.org

Doctors Yashar Hirshaut and Peter I. Pressman question whether we, as a nation, have the commitment to eradicate breast cancer. “Certainly women have it . . . women who have had breast cancer . . . or whose close friends or relatives have had it. And if we add to that number the men whose wives and sisters and girlfriends and mothers have had the disease . . . it means that a very large proportion of our population has a stake in a national determination to beat breast cancer. Whether we can mobilize to achieve this goal remains to be seen.”

Every so often a favorite author disappoints. Such was the case for me on reading Pat Conroy’s South of Broad. It isn’t merely the errors in chronology and detail (more on these in a minute) that disappoint. It’s the story itself.

Conroy sets his story in his beloved Charleston, South Carolina. He trots out the usual dysfunctional families, the abusive father, and downtrodden mother. His setup intrigues until one reads what caused the brother of the protagonist to kill himself, and one thinks, “Oh, not that cliché. Please.”

The unique bond among the main characters pulled me through the story. There were clever moments. The writing was lyrical, beautifully done in the best Conroy fashion. But, there were things that disturbed me as a reader and a writer.

Conroy begins with a prologue that is a five-page love poem to Charleston. Never mind that literary agents are telling new authors that prologues are passé. More to the point, nothing of interest happens in the prologue. It shows the main character, Leo, as a boy on his paper route. This gives the author his vehicle for providing back story and expounding on the loveliness of Charleston. There’s not more to it than that.

Agents tell new authors, too, that a novel’s action must begin immediately. The reader, they say, has to be grabbed and held from the first sentence. South of Broad’s first forty-five pages are filled with nothing but descriptions and back story. It is not until page forty-six that the real action begins.

New authors are also told to keep characters to a minimum. Evidently, the poor reader cannot grasp more than a few characters at a time. This is a “rule” I’ve never liked. I thank Conroy for flouting it and introducing a fistful of characters in the first chapters of his book.

Sadly, there are several errors in South of Broad. I say sadly because with an author of Conroy’s stature and an editor, Nan Talese, who has won awards for excellence in editing one just wouldn’t expect to see these kinds of mistakes:
--In the first pages of the book, an adult tells Leo he would be attractive save for his horrible glasses. Throughout the story, Leo is called “Toad.” At the story’s end, a priest tells Leo he is just too ugly.
--Early on in the book, Leo says he is doing something “just after three.” Six pages later, on the same day, he is going somewhere at the “noonday hour.”
--In one chapter Leo meets someone on a San Francisco cable car. A few chapters later, Leo recalls meeting the individual in an alley in San Francisco.

To some readers these are minor mistakes. But they are enough to throw a reader out of the story. And sloppy editing isn’t something I’d associate with the Conroy-Talese team. All around, between the usual dysfunctional characters--many so over-the-top one has trouble believing in them--and the sloppy editing it’s hard to recommend South of Broad.

On December 22, 2009 I started to lose my hair. Not in great clumps, but strand by strand. And I have a lot of hair. Christmas Day my sister said to me, “Why not just shave it off now? Then you won’t have it all over your pillow.”

Well . . . It’s my hair and my pillow. And my vanity, I suppose. I wasn’t prepared to see myself bald. I’m using the past tense because today . . . well, I’m nearly there.

Part of my reason for letting the process follow its natural course was morbid curiosity. I’d heard from breast cancer survivors that their hair came out in clumps. Mine did not. I did have the burning scalp I’d heard about. And my hair felt like bits of stiff thatch. The texture was strange and the feeling of straw pricking into the scalp uncomfortable. When I reached up to touch it, I had it in my hand in pieces.

I’m still losing hair. I have a very thin covering over the back of the head. My hairdresser has always told me I have enough for two people. Women, usually older and with thinning pates, have stopped me on the street to exclaim about it being so thick and wavy. I’m counting on being able to grow it again quickly and thickly.

Women taking chemotherapy for breast cancer lose their hair because the chemicals used damage the cells that cause hair growth. Doctors Yashar Hirshaut and Peter I. Pressman had this to say about hair loss in their book Breast Cancer - The Complete Guide: “This is the side effect that causes women the greatest sadness. At a time when they are extremely vulnerable, their appearance may be radically changed, and their illness given a visible and very upsetting public manifestation. But every strand of hair will grow back.”

When it does grow back, I’m told, it usually has a nice luster. It can be more curly. Sometimes it’s a different color. I’ve already put my order in for red hair this time. And while I’m at it, I’d like my eye color changed to green. Oh, and could I please be about five inches taller, too?

A friend recently told me that, with my good cheekbones, I looked just fine with next-to-no hair. She was being exceedingly kind. When I look in the mirror, a wizened little old man looks back at me. I know the face of Star Wars’ Yoda when I see it!

A dear friend of mine believes the human body is amazing. It knows when to send signals it is sick and often heals itself. A woman’s reproductive system knows when to start up and how to shut itself down. It’s a miracle.

To which I say, “Tosh,” or something to that effect. If the body were so miraculous, it would never get sick to begin with. Life is filled with illnesses that come unbidden. When the reproductive years end at forty, the body begins its steady decline. We are programmed to fail from the day we are born.

What I find amazing is how the mind governs the body during its tenure on earth. The feats of physical endurance and Olympic accomplishment are incredible. The inventions, the literature, the artistic and technological wonders created by the human brain are astounding.

Just the other night a documentary about the Berlin Airlift aired on one of our public broadcasting stations. The airlift, begun in early summer 1948, lasted nearly eleven months. During that time, Allied planes flew more than two million tons of food and fuel to Berliners whose Soviet occupiers blocked delivery of supplies to the city. Think of the creative minds that conceived of doing such a thing.

At the moment, there are two exhibits in San Francisco museums that are testaments to some of the greatest wonders of the world. The King Tut exhibit speaks to the great minds who architected ancient Egypt. The Cartier exhibit shines a spotlight on some of the most beautiful pieces of jewelry ever conceived by artistic minds.

Last Christmas, my husband and I went into an Apple Computer store to look at iPhones. The iPhone and its ilk are the latest technological wonders of our time. Think of the brains behind the brilliance of these little devices.

Yes, I think the mind trumps the body on most occasions. Of course, the best of all worlds is achieved when the two are able to work in concert. May you have an especially brilliant day today.

On the morning of my cancer diagnosis in October 2009, my husband called from his appointment in another part of our county. He asked whether I wanted him to forego his afternoon meeting and come home to be with me. “No,” I said. “Stay with your normal routine. I don’t want our lives to be defined by breast cancer. This is not who I am.”

How naïve I was. Every conversation these days begins with, “How are you feeling?” Much of the time the news is grim. The two weeks following chemotherapy treatment are marked by bone pain, running migraine, and extreme fatigue. I just begin to feel better when the next treatment begins.

Life these past few months has been about missing things: a friend’s surprise sixtieth birthday party, hearing Condoleezza Rice speak at our local speakers’ series, gatherings over the holidays with family and friends.

I am midway through the chemo treatments (two down and two to go) and have already “lost it.” My husband asked one evening how I was doing. “I’m lonely, bored, and unproductive,” I said, “and too sick, tired, and ugly to do anything about it.” Then I burst into tears.

A booklet from the National Cancer Institute, Chemotherapy and You, notes that, “At some point during chemotherapy you may feel: anxious, depressed, afraid, angry, frustrated, helpless, lonely. It is normal to have (these feelings). After all, living with cancer and getting treatment can be stressful. You may also feel fatigue, which can make it harder to cope with your feelings.”

I have to laugh at the booklet’s suggested remedies. “Relax,” it says. Well, when a patient is knocked flat with pain there’s not much else to do. The next suggestion, “exercise,” is also laughable. When there is not enough energy to cross the street, there is not enough strength to exercise. “Talk with others,” is on the list. That one I’ve done to death. “Join a support group,” the booklet advocates. Heck, if I were well enough to drive myself to a support group I’d drive myself to lunch with a friend instead.

I keep reminding myself that I am only temporarily missing out on things. I am fighting for a rich long life, which will be filled with scores of memorable moments. I pray the fight ends successfully and soon so the whining can end and the living can resume.

If there is a positive side to illness, it’s being able to catch up on reading. I’ve just finished Loving Frank, a novel about renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s love affair with a woman named Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

While I found the book intriguing on several levels, it was an odd read as well.

First, the intrigue. When the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit came to the Marin County Civic Center years ago, I served as a docent. I gave tours of the civic center, a Wright-designed building. I answered questions in a Usonion House erected on the grounds for visitors. Wright’s Usonian was made of inexpensive concrete blocks and was designed as a kind of “custom” home for everyman. In Loving Frank it was interesting to read about the person behind all the wonderful art and architecture.

Author Nancy Horan also managed to soften Wright’s edges. Anyone who has studied the architect comes away believing in his brilliance and finding him arrogant and egocentric. He was both, but Horan brought forth more of his many-faceted personality.

I appreciated every historical aspect of Loving Frank, which runs from 1907 to 1914. Horan researched and wrote her book over a seven year period. She captures all the nuances of the era in perfect detail.

During the five years I wrote my historical novel, The Still Voice, I took great pains to be faithful to the culture, customs, and language of the time. Set in Germany during World War II, my story spans the years 1939 to 1948. Everything about the era, from music, literature and dress to thought and politics, had to be just right.

What made Loving Frank a strange read for me was being at odds with the main character, Mamah, at times. I can understand her feeling stagnant in her life and constricted by the role women had in the early 1900s. But throughout the book, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the husband and children she deserted to carry on her clandestine love affair with Wright.

It’s also odd to read a story when one knows the ending. The story of the madman who put an end to the lives of seven people (Mamah and her children included) at Wright’s Taliesin home, and burnt it to the ground, is well known. It’s to author Horan’s credit that she holds the reader’s interest to the end, even when the outcome of the story is well documented.

Today marks the Feast of the Epiphany. It falls on the twelfth day after Christmas and is the religious observance of the three kings, or wise men, visiting the infant Jesus. It marks the end of the holiday season and the start of a collective optimism being put forward for a better New Year.

A wise woman I know, my mother, once gave me a little book called Up Words for Down Days. It’s filled with philosophical quotes and funny ones. I thought I’d share some of the comments on health from the book. The author, Allen Klein, gives this definition of health, “freedom from disease or abnormality,” to kick off the category.

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. -- Buddha

To be healthy, wealthy, happy and successful in any and all areas of your life you need to be aware that you need to think healthy, wealthy, happy and successful thoughts twenty-four hours a day and cancel all negative, destructive, fearful and unhappy thoughts. These two types of thought cannot coexist if you want to share in the abundance that surrounds us all. -- Sidney Madwed

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. -- Mark Twain

It’s no longer a question of staying healthy. It’s a question of finding a sickness you like. -- Jackie Mason

My doctor said I look like a million dollars--green and wrinkled. -- Red Skelton

He’s turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he’s miserable and depressed. -- David Frost

The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love. -- Hubert Humphrey

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. -- John Milton

The power to heal is in you, and nonetheless there is a tendency in our culture to project onto other people and to want them to heal us. -- Andrew Weil

Scant days into the New Year and my thoughts are turning not to resolutions but to estrogen. Not very forward-looking I suppose, but it’s been on my mind since I learned some weeks ago that the tumor in my breast was one-hundred-percent estrogen positive. The oncologists seemed to like this as it means that--after the surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation--the body will respond to an estrogen suppressant. This will increase the probability that I will be cured of cancer. Surely a good reason for celebrating the New Year.

And yet, the extent to which doctors have remarked on the high degree of estrogen in the tumor sticks in my craw. Here’s why: I’m remembering the early part of this decade when I took soy supplements to manage the side effects of menopause. Billed as “natural and dietary,” these products were, and still are, sold over the counter. They are FDA approved. I must say, the caplets and powders, which contained soy isoflavones (or phytoestrogens), worked like a charm. The hot flashes were kept to a minimum during the time I used these.*

When I first researched these products, not much information was available. Today, a quick internet search yields this from http://www.healthcastle.com/: “Studies found that soy could become ‘pro-estrogen’ in women with low levels of natural estrogen. In other words, concentrated soy supplements may add estrogen to the body and hence increase breast cancer risk in post-menopausal women.”**

Then there is this quote from a paper posted online by the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Ill.: “The estrogenic soy isoflavone, genistein, stimulates growth of estrogen-dependent human breast cancer cells in vivo.” The tests are with mice at the moment. However, the implications are not good.***

As if further proof is needed to show what excess estrogen does in the body, there was the news in December 2009 of a study linking alcohol consumption to a recurrence of breast cancer in women. The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, showed that drinking three or more alcoholic drinks per week seemed to increase the risk for breast cancer recurrence.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Marilyn Kwan of Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., noted, “It has been suggested that alcohol could increase the risk of breast cancer by increasing estrogen metabolism and circulating levels of estrogen, thus promoting growth of the tumor.”

I suppose anyone who has had cancer will ruminate on what could’ve caused it. I know the soy supplements are still popular, and they help a lot of people. Still, had I to do it over, I would run as far from these products as I possibly could. I hope anyone considering taking them works closely with their doctor before picking them off the store shelf.

*Soybeans are rich sources of phytoestrogens called soy isoflavones. Specific plant estrogens in soy include daidzein and genistein. http://www.drugs.com/drp/estroven-caplets.html

**http://www.healthcastle.com/soy-breastcancer.shtml

***http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/22/10/1667

People like to tell me stories of their friends who’ve survived breast cancer. “She’s more beautiful than ever,” they’ll say. “Fit. Glowing skin. Gorgeous hair.”

I can understand the urge to remake oneself in the wake of this ravaging disease. I have the desire myself, though I’m not yet mid way through the treatments.

Senator John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz, revealed last month that she is being treated for breast cancer. “Chemotherapy is serious,” she said. “It’s very painful. And it’s very destructive of people’s--most people’s--lives for a while, anyway.” How true that is.

There is nothing in the world to prepare a woman for the ugliness of breast cancer. First, there is the angry red eyebrow-like scar above the most personal of organs. There is the slit under the arm where the lymph nodes were removed. There’s the hair, coming out in tufts. Then there’s the body, weakened from surgeries and recoveries and the destruction of chemotherapy. Too depleted for any real exercise, the body grows flabbier by the day.

Food must be taken as the system needs nourishment. Yet, digestion can be painful and many foods leave the throat feeling sore.

There is the wider fallout as well. Family and friends grow weary of hearing the story. The writing, or whatever work one does, suffers. And the home, once well kept, could use a good scrubbing.

Yes, I understand the need to rebuild one’s body following the war with cancer. Though, at the moment, I’m too spent to do much about it.