breast cancer

7 Horrifying Facts About Chemotherapy

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I originally wrote this in January 2016 and submitted it to Cracked.com, which I was greatly enjoying at the time. Never heard back from them, so here it is.

There are about a bazillion different types of cancer. Not all of them require or even benefit from chemotherapy, but, when we hear “cancer”, chemo is what we tend to immediately think of, and fear the most. Except, of course, dying.

I have “difficult” breasts, and I’ve had cancer scares before. Each time, the most frightening possible outcome, to me, was chemo (yes, chemo scared me more than death). My nightmare finally came true: in late 2014 I was diagnosed with breast cancer requiring surgery and then chemotherapy (followed by radiation and hormonal therapy).

While chemotherapy may well save my life (we’ll get to that), it has proved in some ways to be almost as bad as I’d feared – and, in other ways, even worse. 

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my life in tech, women in technology

My Brilliant Speaking Career

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This post was originally drafted in March 2015, don’t know why I never published it then. I was undergoing chemo at the time so I probably simply forgot about it.

Since I returned to the US to work and live in 2007, I have attended many highly technical events for each of my employers. At most I was present to run a camera, social media, or the event itself, so my knowledge of the technologies being discussed was not at issue. But I was becoming a recognized expert on social media and technology marketing, and began speaking at conferences (tech and non-) on those topics.

My employers did not always have clear policies about what conference travel they would pay for. Usually, if it was a related tech industry event, my expenses would be covered without demur. Sometimes I felt that I’d be stretching a point, and did not ask.

Then came Monktoberfest. Though the 2013 edition was only its third, Monktoberfest and its sister event, Monki Gras (in London), were already well-regarded events that combined unusual, thought-provoking tech talks with… really good beer. By all reports, it was a great combination, and my then-employer’s founder/CTO Jason Hoffman as well as our VP of Engineering had spoken at Monki Gras the year before.

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bio, my life in tech, women in technology

Women in Tech and the 2016 US election

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Note: This piece was originally drafted in March 2017, but for some reason I never got around to publishing it. If Kamala Harris does become the Democratic candidate this year, everything I wrote back then will be even more true – and worse with the racism that will accompany it.

The US election was taking a toll on women even before its hideous denouement last November.

The constant, blatant misogyny against Hillary expressed by both left and right was exhausting. We could see ourselves in her: working harder, being more prepared, having done all her homework (and everyone else’s) yet being judged on her hair, her makeup, her clothing. Being told she was too shrill, too combative, too much like someone’s mother. Not nice enough.

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bio, theater

A Theater-Goer’s Diary: Anything Goes

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Enrico and I saw this show with Patti LuPone at a Sunday matinee in 1988. It was the start of our Cole Porter obsession.

I had bought tickets at the last minute and we somehow ended up front row center. The stage, only about 4 feet above the level of our seats, represented the deck of an ocean liner, complete with a railing.

When we arrived to take our seats, I had been puzzled at a rectangle of soft foam taped to the floor more or less under my feet. Later in the show we learned what that was for: there’s a scene in which two characters are leaning on the rail talking, swigging from a bottle of champagne. They finish the bottle and drop it over the rail – cue sound effect of bottle falling and finally splashing. It landed on our feet.

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my life in tech

Toxic Corporate Behaviors

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Death by PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a powerful and useful tool, but it is widely abused in corporations, especially internally. Most slide decks cannot contain all the details needed to truly evaluate an idea, technology, etc. – presentation slides are not intended for this use, but many people pretend that a deck can contain all you need to know to make a decision or understand a result. 

I have seen and worked at multiple organizations where many hours of staff time and even professional graphics help were applied to make a deck beautiful – for internal use. A shiny slide deck and a persuasive speaker could gain support for incomplete or even bad ideas, or persuade the higher-ups that something had been a huge success when it had actually been a failure.

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