the never-ending weekend

This was my room at the Summit. The bed was a pillow-filled oasis.

This was the Summit, obviously. 

Lance. (Who, FYI, stayed at my hotel with Kate Hudson this weekend). 

Me, stranded in the Midwest, thanks to storms in the Northeast. 

So. I am back in NY, and I am SO thankful for that. This past weekend was not a good idea, for the most part. It started with my flight to OH being delayed for hours, and I missed the Town Hall with McCain. To top it all off, I was sitting in the middle of high school lacrosse players who were coming back from Europe and were in that post-exhaustion obnoxious stage of travel. Good times. 

So I get to OH, finally, and decided to order room service - pizza - which was amazing. Things just taste better when they're ordered through room service, I decided. Then I met up with my friend Laura for a drink. I met Laura at the last Summit. 

Friday, the first day of the Summit, I have to say, I was nonplussed. It was basically a bunch of review stuff and Advocacy 101. And we were told, much to my horror, that research funding "wasn't a problem". Well, I'm glad THEY think so. My group was nice, and I actually met a girl who lives 5 minutes from me in Carolina, and works at UNC Hospitals. I had to travel all the way to OH to meet her! 

This whole time, I'm coughing up a lung, second-guessing my choice to travel. I finally had my doc call in a Z-pack to OSU's campus during the summit and I snuck out of my session to go pick it up. Saturday I was too sick to move out of my great king-sized bed. 

Sunday rolls around, and we're in the airport, and after waiting 4+ hours, all flights to NY were canceled because of the weather. So we got put up in a hotel nearby, and I met this amazing, neat woman who works in the city with art and medicine/healing. 

And this morning, I hop on the plane at 6:25 am, get back to nyc, and have the insane cab driver take me to 92 and Lex via Central Park West - yes, somehow, we ended up on the other side of the Park, and when I asked him why we didn't just go up Madison, the best he could tell me was "I have no idea." Sweet. 

The conference.....I haven't sorted out how I feel about the Summit just yet, and I was talking to R last night at the hotel about this. It was a very different experience going to it now, as compared to 2 years ago. Maybe because of me, maybe because of the LAF; most likely a combination of the two. I just really can't get into the whole "my cancer was worse than yours" game, or the "I'm a better advocate than you" game. I don't like the Army and battle metaphors, and I lose patience with those for whom cancer becomes a professional identity. Does that make sense? What I mean is, you're a cancer survivor? Wonderful, I am truly thankful and happy for you. But if you allow it to supersede everything else you are and everything else in your life.....maybe there's something more going on. And that was just one thing that started to get to me this past weekend. The camaraderie was wonderful, as it always is at LAF events, and everyone was very nice and it was a supportive place, and I met some truly amazing people, and for that, I am happy I went. Will I go to another LAF event anytime soon? I'm not sure. Not because I don't like them (quite the opposite, they've been wonderful to me), but because I think what I can gain from them has shifted to the next level, as a natural occurrence from my experience at MSKCC and otherwise. 

In sad news, I do want to mention the passing of two people who died before they should have. Katie Reider, a musician, was 30 when she died 2 weeks ago of a tumor that took away her ability to perform and even talk. And Randy Pausch, the "last lecture" professor from Carnegie Mellon, passed away on Friday, sadly, of pancreatic cancer. This is why I do what I do - because it is getting harder and harder to hear about and accept news like this.