I found out some very exciting news today: My book, Previvors, is the winner of  the 2011 International Book Award for the Best Health Book in the “Cancer” category. Here’s a link to the press release: www.internationalbookawards.com/2011pressrelease.html.

It’s an amazing feeling, being recognized for all of the work that went into this important book. The five women featured in Previvors and I are thrilled!

Potty training is one of those things that once you go through it, it’s like it never happened. My daughter and son have been out of diapers for 4 and 2 years respectively, but I can barely remember the kids ever wearing them.

So it was fun for me to work on a quiz for Parents.com about this very subject matter. It’s called What’s Your Potty Training I.Q.? and it actually brought back some memories.

Whether you’re in the dirty diaper trenches or you haven’t changed one in years, take the quiz and see how much you really know about this major milestone.

Recently, I wrote a piece for Parents.com entitled 8 Positive Ways to Address Children’s Gender Identity Issues. It’s funny, as adults we’ve come so far when it comes to accepting one another’s differences. But, for children, any difference can be traumatizing—even something as innocuous as wearing glasses or a different-colored shirt than the rest of the class. So how do you handle it when your son wants to wear princess dresses or your daughter wants to be the only girl on the baseball team?

The recent popularity of My Princess Boy by Cheryl Kilodavis has really brought the issue of gender identity into the limelight. I hope my article helps do that even further. I’m curious to hear what you think!

Let me be straight about this: I am a huge fan of the technology that’s available to us today (and I’m not just saying that because I’m married to a software developer.) I’d be lost without my DVR; running with anything heavier than an IPod would be unthinkable; and I honestly can’t imagine not being able to access my email anywhere, anytime. But after what happened to me this past Friday night, I actually started to question whether or not our countless forms of communication and means of capturing memories are doing us more harm than good. Read More »

In my book, Previvors, I include a chapter entitled “A Promising Future.” And under the section about breast cancer screening, I talk about different promising techniques on the horizon. Well, one of the ones I mentioned already came to fruition: The Food and Drug Administration just approved the first three-dimensional mammography system to screen for breast cancer. (It was developed by Hologic.)

So what are 3-D mammograms? Here’s the explanation from my book: Read More »

It seems my Huffington Post blog about the silence behind infertility yesterday struck a nerve with some people: In one day, more than 1,600 men and women recommended it on Facebook and 117 people shared their comments.

That’s not to say all the comments were positive ones. Many people argue that those with infertility should just stop “complaining” and adopt. Others assume is that IVF is the only form of infertility treatment. One even likens the “need” to have a child to the “need” to eat a pizza. And a few say that we already have made great strides and that infertility gets plenty of attention and coverage. Read More »

For most of my life, I’ve been a film buff with a particular soft spot for kids’ movies. Even before we became parents, I’d drag my husband to the latest Disney (and later Pixar and Dreamworks) had to offer. And now that we have two excuses to go to these movies (a.k.a. our son and daughter), we’ve seen it all: From perennial classics like Cinderella and more recent hits like Up to less-than-stellar-but-my-kids-still-love-it movies like Gulliver’s Travels and Yogi Bear. (Seriously!?! They couldn’t come out with one good family movie this past Christmas?)

So I kind of consider myself a bit of a children’s film aficionado and with the Academy Awards just a few weeks away, I feel compelled to say the following: Not only should Toy Story 3 win Best Animated Feature Film, it should also win Best Picture of the Year…hands down. Read More »

OK, I’ll admit it:  I can’t walk out of the grocery store without grabbing the latest issue of People or Us Weekly. I watch hundreds of movies and entire seasons of TV shows a year (thank you Netflix!). And I haven’t missed a Golden Globe or Academy Awards’ ceremony since I was 9 years old.

But despite my Hollywood obsession, I’ve never been compelled to read any celebrity memoir, even though there are plenty dominating Amazon. That is, until now. For some reason, I just had to pick up a copy of Portia de Rossi’s memoir, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain. For me, there was something about the Ally McBeal-eating disorder-journey to finding love with Ellen combination that I found irresistible. But while the book didn’t disappoint—actually I couldn’t put it down—it honestly scared the hell out of me. Read More »

I’ve been a health journalist for 14 years, and I’ve covered topics ranging from breast cancer and autoimmune diseases to depression and eating disorders. I always feel like I’ve “seen it all” as they say, and yet I’m still repeatedly shocked by certain medical issues that people face today. One that I recently came across really took me by surprise. Read More »

We’ve made such great strides when it comes to breast cancer:  We have better treatments with fewer side effects. We have much-needed funding and dozens upon dozens of organizations dedicated to helping find a cure. And, of course, we have awareness: The entire month of October is bathed in pink; support groups abound; thousands walk in solidarity with signs on their backs proudly exclaiming, “I’m a Survivor!” or “I’m a Previvor!”

But what about those women who are neither?  While we try  to focus on the positive when it comes to breast cancer, the truth is that far too many women do succumb to the disease. In fact, 40,000 people die from the illness each year. So what do we call women who are facing metastatic disease? They are neither survivors nor previvors. And, according to a report in The New York Times by Roni Caryn Rabin, they sometimes feel “invisible” within the advocacy community. Read More »