According to Douglas Adams, the answer to the universe is 42. I beg to disagree, because the answer for me this past year has been more eyeliner, owing to 8 months of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. The chemo stripped away my hair, my eyebrows and eyelashes, as well as body hair (a Brazilian wax without the "striiiiiip....ouch!").

Sooo, because I didn't recognize the big, bald, hairless baby I saw every morning in the bathroom mirror, I started increasing the eyeliner around my eyes, until I could easily pass for an extra in the "Walk Like an Egyptian" video. Because I haven't been able to master the niceties of the crayon type eyesticks (I keep breaking off the tip in the sharpener, at which point they become useless. Unless I get a bent paperclip and start digging out the broken off piece, in which case, I have to start all over, and break off a new piece of crayon in the sharpener...ad infinitum. Very unsatisfactory.), I prefer the felt tip eyeliner type (brand rhymes with "Hover Squirrel") in black-brown shade. 

Unlike the ancient Egyptians, I don't do the green eyeshadow. (George HW Bush voice): "Nope, not a good look for me. Wouldn't be prudent. Not doing it." 

 Ah well, I do what I do to look like me to myself in the face of the challenges of dealing with  fighting cancer, and the treatments associated with it.  It's what I can do to myself when all these other things are being done to me.

On Salon.com today Mary Elizabeth Williams has written an article, "Stop Blaming Steve Jobs for His Death." I am so angry and find it so beyond ridiculous that people are now saying if he'd just had the surgery earlier he could have beaten his cancer and be alive today. First of all, he survived 8 years with pancreatic cancer, which is tremendous. Most people die within the first year, no matter what they do. Second, who are we to blame him for searching for an alternative cure for his disease?

Until you've been through it yourself, you have no idea what you're talking about and no right to criticize. Try sitting in the doctor's office listening to the diagnosis, the treatment options and their side effects.  Try listening to your mother and sister cry on the phone when you call them to tell them you have cancer. Try recovering from the pain of biopsies, surgery, scar tissue. Try lying in the radiation room by yourself for a half an hour with radiactive rods placed inside your body and going back again and again. Try dealing with the pain and burns caused by the radiation. Try having veins collapse and bruises that won't go away from the chemo. Try looking at your husband's face the first time he sees you hooked up to the bags of poison that will burn the cancer cells from your body. Try looking at the other people around you hooked up to their own bags of poison and seeing yourself in their faces. 

Then, when you've gotten through all of this and the blood test declares you "100% cancer free," your finger and soles of your feet are numb from the chemicals. You keep losing your balance and falling because you can't feel your feet, so you have to retire from a job that you were dedicated to and gave you your purpose in life, and leave co-workers that you loved working with.  So criticizers of Steve Job's choices for his treatment, you haven't walked a mile in his athletic shoes, or mine, so STFU!