Tag Archives: Fear

Luck and Attention

January 19, 2017Cancer, Health and WellnessBlogs, body, Cancer, chemo diaries, Chemotherapy, communication, Education, Fear, Health, Lung Cancer, positive approach, Positivity, Science, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

I recently had the good fortune of interviewing a long-time friend and fellow Stage 4 cancer patient for my podcast, The Deep Breath. Usually, the podcast is just me running off at the mouth, dispensing my heavily biased advice or addressing questions that have come up in one way or another. Sometimes I just talk about my personal experience. My best (or at least my own favorite) recordings are those in which I interview someone with a different perspective than my own or from whom I can learn something interesting. This one was different, though, and required a different treatment.

When I think of Mike, I always imagine him as he was in high school. That is mostly due to the fact that I’ve only seen him a scant handful of times over the past 30 years, and none of those were particularly recent. We have stayed in contact primarily because of social media, both of us being part of a wide group of shared friends who have remained more or less civil toward one another even as we have spread apart geographically, politically and, outside of these virtual networks, socially. His story began to intertwine more tightly with my own about a year ago when he announced on Facebook that he had been diagnosed with colon cancer and was about to embark upon an uncertain course of treatment with chemotherapy. Continue reading Luck and Attention →

Is This What Dying Feels Like?

January 9, 2017Cancer, Health and WellnessBlogs, body, Cancer, chemo diaries, Chemotherapy, communication, Fear, Health, positive approach, Positivity, Reason, toxins, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

As a cancer patient on regular rounds of chemotherapy, this is a question that I have often asked myself. When I look in the mirror and see a body that I don’t recognize and the effects of the drugs on my brain have me under a heavy fog of malaise, it is easy to drop into the trap of defeatism. I have stared into my own eyes, wondering what had become of their prior yearning or that sly glint I imagined they used to have, and asked the mirror if this is what it feels like to die. To waste away into a reflection of what I was. To effectively disappear from the world, slowly, margin by margin, breath by breath. Continue reading Is This What Dying Feels Like? →

Chemotherapy Horrors for Halloween and the Truth About Cancer

October 31, 2016Cancer, Fear, Health and Wellnessadenocarcinoma, Cancer, chemo diaries, Chemotherapy, Education, Fear, Health, Lies, Lung Cancer, misinformation, paranoia, Reason, Science, Sense, toxins, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

I take the commitment of a Halloween costume seriously. When I was a kid playing with stage makeup, I made myself look like I had been beaten so badly one Halloween that people forgot I was in costume and wanted to take me to the hospital. This year, I contemplated going as my cancer diagnosis. It seemed appropriate, after all, because I had the serendipity of getting my infusion on Halloween day this year. Just seemed perfect. But then I was thinking about it and, quite frankly, cancer just isn’t as scary as it used to be.

Just Give Me Candy — Because nothing delivers the scares like a guy in an orange shirt.

So I went with the most frightening costume I could come up with: a candy fiend. After all, little is as horrifying as someone coming off of a sugar binge. And my paunch is perfectly highlighted by the tight-fitting shirt that I have now worn for somewhere in the range of 6 to 10 Halloweens. (What can I say, some things are simply classically insidious.)

While a few years ago the idea of a giant tumor might have been amusing to me, and the notion of cancer in general seemed like a properly frightful subject, the story around these has changed for me. Hollywood, of course, still relies on cancer as it’s go-to meme for unsettling disease requirements, but then Hollywood is creatively lazy and uses the most basic shorthand it has for easy emotional manipulation.

The Truth About Cancer Continue reading Chemotherapy Horrors for Halloween and the Truth About Cancer →

WHO on EMF and EHS – Will Wi-Fi Cause Cancer?

October 21, 2016Cancer, Fear, Health and Wellness, ReasonBlogs, body, Cancer, communication, Education, Fear, Health, Lies, misinformation, paranoia, Reason, Science, Sense, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

In this modern world, there are plenty of reasons to be cautious. Digital devices almost seem to control our lives. They take up our time, luring us into the virtual world for entertainment, allowing us to be more productive by keeping us linked to our work 24/7, lulling us into a world of social networking that never requires us to physically interact with other humans. It is no wonder that authors of speculative fiction depict alternative worlds where we are literally plugged in.

In offices and homes across the developed world, it is more likely than not that there will be active Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connections running all day long, often from multiple devices. In the past twenty years, as wireless connections have become more prevalent, concerns have been increasingly raised about their safety. The World Health Organization (WHO) took notice in the late 90s and began looking at all the evidence that was piling up from studies in many countries. Key to this awareness were the growing trend of Electromagnetic Hyper Sensitivity (EHS) and the concern that Electromagnetic Frequencies (EMF) could cause cancer.

Continue reading WHO on EMF and EHS – Will Wi-Fi Cause Cancer? →

The End of Life and How to Die

October 7, 2016Fear, Health and Wellness, ReasonBlogs, body, business, communication, Education, end of civilization, Fear, Health, language, Lies, misinformation, paranoia, positive approach, Positivity, Reason, Science, Sense, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

I was going to write about working without wearing any pants, and how pantsless careers are sort of ideal, but instead I am going to offer some thoughts on death and dying.

Most of my mornings begin like this: the low-impact sport of serving up espresso drinks at my daughter’s school followed by a cool down period of errands on the way home. Sometimes, since this is Los Angeles and there is always a bit of traffic to contend with, I have time for a phone conversation or to catch up on my quota of NPR. The ride home also gives me time to ruminate on important issues and subjects for my blog. Sometimes a conversation sparks a new thought process, twists the direction I had planned on going or otherwise derails what would have been a perfectly good fluff piece. By way of example, I recently conversed with my mother about my father’s final days, thus running the train of intention for this post completely off the rails. Continue reading The End of Life and How to Die →

Support My Site in September and get My Book Free!

September 26, 2016Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reasonadenocarcinoma, Blogs, business, Cancer, Chemotherapy, commercialism, communication, consumerism, Education, Fear, Health, journalism, Labels, language, Lung Cancer, misinformation, positive approach, Positivity, Reason, Sense, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

Staring at my budget with blurred eyes and a brain addled by a host of fun chemicals, I have to pinch myself and remind myself there are reasons that I chose the long game; there are reasons I passed over GoFundMe or GiveForward or any of the other single-goal fundraising websites my friends have used wisely to bridge specific financial gaps. I’ve seen those sites work super effectively, raising $3,000 or more in less than a week while targeting figures high enough to cover a host of potential costs ahead. For those friends, who would be “out of the woods” in a few months or so, where all their resources will be expended in a concentrated time, I think the outreach and the community reciprocity is amazing and a great testament to compassion within our social groups. But I’m not hard-wired that way, and my condition is not so neatly tied up in a closed time-frame.

Longer stretch, earning smaller frequent support goals

At this point, though it could change, I am on this merry-go-round every three weeks until I die — preferably quite a few years from now. And while I am still riding my chosen horse (a big, jet-black unicorn with a dangerously sharp silver horn, if you must know), I have a lot that I want to accomplish. I can’t manage a job for more than an hour or two most mornings, so I haven’t been traditionally employed for over two years. And yet, I have so much work to do! Like my book on living well with advanced cancer, getting on with life in spite of new limitations and finding the very best of ourselves along theway. Continue reading Support My Site in September and get My Book Free! →

The High (Financial) Cost of Cancer and Why I Am Not Setting Up A GoFundMe Page

September 15, 2016Cancer, Health and Wellnessadenocarcinoma, Blogs, Cancer, Chemotherapy, communication, Education, Fear, Health, journalism, Lung Cancer, positive approach, Reason, SenseJeffrey Poehlmann

When I was diagnosed with metastatic, inoperable Stage 4 Lung Cancer, it wasn’t long before people were suggesting that I set up a GoFundMe page or use a similar service like YouCaring that would allow friends, family and even total strangers to donate money that would offset my soon to be staggering expenses. My first thought was, “wow, someone else can pay my bills! Score!” I knew about these sites — I had even donated to a few families through them, just like I had supported projects on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, et. al. — but it had never occurred to me that I might one day be in a position where I would need to set one up. After all, we have good insurance, my wife has a steady job and I should still be able to work at least part time — that is what had run through my head — so this was a storm I expected to weather.

At first, things looked promising. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, our family’s insurance costs actually came down. We were no longer subsidizing larger families (yes, I understand that families with more children may have seen an increase in premiums because many old policies used to have “family” rates that did not count the number of insured) and we also now had two “safety nets” built into our coverage: a potentially manageable annual cap on medical spending and the knowledge that I could not be dropped or denied coverage because of my condition. Had I been diagnosed a couple of years earlier, this would have been a very different story and we would, with some level of certainty, have lost our home by now or I would be getting treated through some other means entirely, maybe even be dead, or some combination of those options. Continue reading The High (Financial) Cost of Cancer and Why I Am Not Setting Up A GoFundMe Page →

Parabens, Fear and Junk Science

August 7, 2016Fear, Health and Wellness, ReasonBeauty, body, business, consumerism, Education, Fear, Health, ingredients, Labels, misinformation, paranoia, poison, Reason, Science, Sense, toxins, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

I was going to title this post “Why I Love Parabens.” I had been reading up on them lately for a number of reasons, mostly surrounding a largely unfounded controversy surrounding a type of lip balm my daughter had been using. In the case of the lip balm, the “paraben-free” product was being accused of harboring mold with the implication being that this was a manufacturing defect. Examination of the claims revealed, however, that the mold was most likely the result of misuse or poor storage of the product which, due to the lack of effective preservatives, would be expected to mold if it was exposed to moisture and kept in the dark. This does, however, beg the question as to why a lip balm, of all things, would be sold without effective preservatives to protect against mold.

The answer, of course, is the unwarranted vilification of parabens. The natural cosmetics industry, and perhaps more accurately the Environmental Working Group and other activist organizations have been disseminating information about parabens for over a decade now, describing how they are endocrine disruptors and probably cause cancer. And this is where we get to the point of where science is occluded by hype, to the detriment of the consumer, the patient, the regular person on the street… Continue reading Parabens, Fear and Junk Science →

Clearing the Roof

July 11, 2016Cancer, Fear, Health and Wellness, ReasonBlogs, Cancer, chemo diaries, Chemotherapy, communication, Education, Fear, Health, Lung Cancer, positive approach, Positivity, Reason, Sense, toxins, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

The past two weeks wore on me; at times, I felt like I could drown in the pool of stress I had been slowly sweating out of me, a thick quagmire created of my own internal angst that seemed to engulf me from all sides. I’ve drained that pool in the last couple of days after trying a little exercise I like to call Clearing the Roof. Because I realized that stress is a top-down issue, it was going to have to be dealt with right up there, on the roof, where all that clutter and debris had been sitting, decomposing into mucky, thick, unmanageable gunk. Some of it was fresh, identifiable, easily swept away. Some of it had been there for years and was entirely unrecognizable. A whole lot of it, it turned out, was just settled pollution, junk particles that had come to rest because nothing had ever washed them away. It had been a much longer time than I thought since I had done this kind of personal maintenance.

Good thing I had a tall ladder.

But first, some backstory: For years I have talked about the importance of letting go of stress. I have let it eat at me in the past while I absorbed it from other people like an emotional sponge and the effect is that it triggers very strange migraine effects that mess with the speech center in my brain, causes a blind spot that travels across my field of vision and has, on one particular occasion, caused a trans ischemic event that, for those unfamiliar with the term, is kind of like a small stroke during which I lost control of my body, hallucinated that the table full of Happy Hour beer and appetizers was bouncing around, tossing things at me, and then I could not make sentences that anyone (else) could understand for about twenty minutes while my left hand tried repeatedly to climb up my chest. Continue reading Clearing the Roof →

Guns or Cancer, Which is Better?

May 9, 2016Cancer, Fear, Politics, ReasonBlogs, Cancer, communication, conservative, Education, end of civilization, Fear, journalism, language, Lies, misinformation, paranoia, Politics, Reason, Science, SenseJeffrey Poehlmann

I don’t normally write about guns, but soon it will be gun violence awareness day, so it seems appropriate to throw my two cents in. After all, I like shooting guns, and I like talking about the law. Plus, you know, I have a terminal cancer diagnosis, so it just kind of makes sense.

I recently read two similar news stories about a pair of women who were killed mere days apart: one was deliberately shot by a stranger after leaving a rural vacation spot, and another was shot in the back when her toddler found a gun in the car while they were driving. Pure coincidence that both of those happened close together in Wisconsin, a state I used to live just over the border from, and happened within a week of each other with two mothers being shot and killed while driving with their children in the car. Otherwise, one was a presumably intentional (if random) murder by a horrible person, the other a very random (and presumably inadvertent) act by an innocent.

I’d love to say that the random shooting of mothers by their small children was a complete outlier, but it isn’t. Sadly, this sort of thing happens far too frequently, even among responsible gun-owners and pro-gun advocates — even while they are driving. Of course, not all toddlers who come across guns shoot their mothers. Sometimes, and I find this part deeply, deeply sad, they simply shoot themselves because a loaded gun was within reach. (For those of you who did not or could not click that last link, it details four cases where toddlers shot and killed themselves during the same week last month, in addition to five non-fatal accidental shootings by minors.)

And that is a clear example of what is wrong with current gun regulation. Continue reading Guns or Cancer, Which is Better? →

Just Bad for You

Saving you from yourself