when you're not around threesomes aren't normal...

breasts and ovaries

In October my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Around Halloween - about two hours before my friends and I were having a Halloween party - she called to tell me that she was having a mastectomy less than a week later. Strangely enough, I dressed up at the party as a lactating mother. The next week my mother had one breast removed, and had the second biopsied for the third time - the first two times they were unable to get a conclusive result. It turned out that the other breast also had a cancerous lump. Three weeks later, she had that breast removed as well. She is 49 years old - not terribly young for breast cancer, but young enough to indicate an elevated risk for future cancer and for breast cancer in her daughter (me). Her age, along with the rarity of having cancer in both breasts at the same time, is enough to make the doctors quite concerned that she has a gene mutation. If she does have that mutation, it is highly recommended that she have a full hysterectomy to protect against ovarian cancer and cancer in the small amount of breast tissue she has left. After the hysterectomy, she will not be able to take any hormones, as this might increase the risk of cancer. She is now arranging to get the test.

there is more ...

Technorati Tag: breast cancer

My Bloggy Valentine

Technorati Tag: geek

Happy Valentine's Day!



Get your own from ThinkGeek.

In Today's News: Women Bloggers Wear Black Negligees!

Technorati Tag: women bloggers

From the good people at Gawker:

The Daily’s much-anticipated photo spread on New York blogger chicks is out today.



Yes, this is what we all look like.

You can read the article here.

What's New on BlogsByWomen

Technorati Tag: women bloggers

Hey, Blogging Goddesses -

I'm Jennifer, the new owner of BlogsByWomen and TheNewJane. When I'm not blogging, I'm a women's career strategist, author and speaker based in Los Angeles, and I publish a monthly ezine called Success Tips for Gutsy Women designed to give women the tips, tricks and tools they need to have a great career on their own terms (you didn't know?!? Honey, get yourself to my blog and subscribe!).

In fact, my blog, The New Charm School is, in fact, a spinoff of that newsletter, since I had things to say more than once a month (quelle surprise - NOT). You have my baby seester to thank (or blame) for getting me into blogging, and the inspirational gang at BlogHer to strapping me in permanently.

So there I was, minding my own business in late December, in that dangerous lull between decadently opening lots of presents and virtuously shedding bad habits, I got a bee in my bonnet about reaching even more women online, and making sure those women had the tools they needed to connect with others online. So I contacted Genia and up and bought the websites BlogsByWomen (and its blog) and TheNewJane.

You may have noticed the small changes we've made so far on the main BlogsByWomen site, including deleting a number of splogs and dead links, and adding images to the directory. In the last few weeks, the directory has grown to include more than 1,000 women bloggers from North America, Europe, South America, Australia and Asia. I'm looking forward to welcoming many more after our upcoming Extreme Makeover of the site to make it more useful and visually appealing...including redesigning the category taxonomy and adding a friendly how-to section for new bloggers with tips on tagging, traffic exchange, the mysteries of ranking, and more (and having the accurate number of listed blogs show up in the blog sidebar, LOL).

We'll be retooling TheNewJane as an online "magazine" for working women, and my monthly ezine will be rebranded as TheNewJane, featuring tidbits and quick links to the greatest hits from that site.

And the BlogsByWomen blog will get a major makeover this spring, too, from a network of women bloggers posting daily on topics from careers to gadgets to parenting to dating tips (for your teen, yourself, or yourself as the parent of a teen :-) ). I can't wait!

If you are interested in writing feature articles for TheNewJane, or would like to join the network currently forming for this blog, please drop me a note at jennifer [at] jenniferinc dot com, with "Yes! I want to write!" in the subject line.

Shameless plug: If you are a woman and write a blog with original content, and have been blogging for more than one week and have at least five posts, you can get added to our directory using this link. An actual human will read it (probably me!) and let you know when it is approved. See you in the blogosphere!

Excuse the Interruption - Random Technorati post

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