I get quiet for long periods...I don't like to complain in the present tense. I get everybody worried who reads this and things usually pass eventually. So I can report that although I've been through hairy side-effects for three different meds, I am now off all of them and walking my three miles again.

At last, after all sorts of guessing as to causes, my strange two-week depression and long cry jags are over. It happened just like that. How such a quick cure? I quit taking Prevacid.

I'm almost four months out of treatments for breast cancer now and I thought I could just forget the whole thing, like an episode or a bad cold, but the emotional impact of it all has astonished--and embarrassed--me. But in case someone else is experience this reaction, I will share it. I feels normal, somehow, however unwelcome.

It's been almost three weeks since I quit taking Arimidex--against one doctor's urgent advice to stay on it and following another's urgent recommendation to get off--and the pain is letting up some, but not gone.

I've been taking Arimidex, a Tamoxifen alternative, hoping to avoid the side-effects so many friends had complained about Tamoxifen. I didn't realize I'd possibly suffer even worse with Arimidex.

I'm just back from a trip to visit some of the galleries and bookstores that carry my work in West Michigan, and my new, just-printed FISH THERAPY cards were a big hit!

Questions about sex from women in treatment for or surviving breast cancer are apparently rarely taken seriously by their health professionals. Perhaps it's time to talk.

If you've found me today through the Wall Street Journal, my thanks to Laura Landro for sending you here. Welcome to my Breast Cancer Blog and much more: Also find here art, writing, and a creative life.

The awful surprises in my life have sometimes been followed by oddly sweet ones, like reassuring angels anxious to ensure that I still believe in life. One of the sweetest for me--second only to my release from cigarettes--has been my escape from television.

Wanting to put my fish paintings to good use and needing something new to offer the galleries and bookstores that carry my work, I've come up with a series of Fish Therapy Cards.