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"My office has officially turned into a cancer command station. I&amp;amp;#8217;ve got it all: cancer phone calls, cancer e-mails, cancer columns, books, blogs, photos and, my favorite part, cancer patients. Seriously, this place is crawling with &amp;amp;#8216;em. Last week I had Zavie Miller from Ottawa, Canada here. We met last year in Dublin of all places, where we were both participating in an international cancer conference. Zavie has had CML longer than anyone I know, takes Gleevec, is in complete remission, feels great and has contagious positive energy&amp;amp;#8212;and he knows everyone in the CML community. He brought along his daughter Mara, who was equally fantastic (and not just because she brought me gorgeous, handspun candies from Amsterdam) and so funny/smart/sharp, I wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t be surprised if she started doing stand-up. A week before that I had the lovely Beth Hodges in from Atlanta (sadly, no photo&amp;amp;#8230;Beth, why didn&amp;amp;#8217;t we take a shot?!). Anyway, Beth was diagnosed with CML last March and is one of the best commenters on the blog&amp;amp;#8212;thanks for all the insightful, honest feedback, Beth! Of course I had to leave her in my office for half an hour while I dealt with a sex feature emergency (yes, I know how silly that sounds), but we got to talk for a bit about leukemia, remission, IVF and IUI. You know, the usual girl talk&amp;amp;#8230;. Then yesterday Jennifer Eisenbud Sawle (remember her from my August column?), another CML patient who wants to have a baby, came in. She was here with her husband Bruce and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Raya (beyond adorable). They are planning on using a surrogate for their next baby so we talked a lot about that (fascinating), then played dress-up in the shoe closet with Raya, who&amp;amp;#8217;s already obsessed with fashion at two! I&amp;amp;#8217;ve also recently had visits with the fabulous Francesca and Tonya, and have more planned for next week. You might think that all of this patient interaction would be overwhelming or depressing, but it&amp;amp;#8217;s not at all. We CML patients have such a strong connection that it&amp;amp;#8217;s like getting together with old friends, talking openly about an experience only we can truly relate to. My coworkers probably think I&amp;amp;#8217;m just goofing off with all the chatter coming out of my office these days, and in some ways they&amp;amp;#8217;re right. Sure we talk about our CML, our blood counts, our test results, our fears, but we also talk about life&amp;amp;#8212;vacations, break-ups, weight-gain, American Girl Dolls. And I can&amp;amp;#8217;t tell you how nice it is to have these little breaks in my crazy days. &amp;amp;#8212;Erin"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/blogs/life-with-cancer/2006/10/cancer-central>