Some Views from PATIENTLAND™

How are YOU? Please comment! Nosy friends WANT TO KNOW!

Sunflowers are everywhere, showing us the last days of a very hot summer. Labor Day Weekend is almost upon us, and I – for one – am looking forward to the autumn weather and its doings.

One of the trips I will be making soon will be to Philadelphia for the upcoming, annual AllyCon – the Patient Conference hosted by Colorectal Cancer Alliance. A small group of some of my original supporters and community members will be joining Sarah Kelly and me for the Walk for the Cure/Philadelphia.

We are really looking forward to meeting all of those patients and to seeing our CCA colleagues!

This has been a productive summer in the life of a kick-as cancer patient advocate and community-builder: most of June was spent on airplanes going to Chicago, DC, San Diego, San Francisco. In the California trips, I was invited to sit on panels; in DC I was attended an important meeting re: colorectal cancer, and Chicago was the site of the always-exciting ASCO meeting.

I probably don’t need to say that I have not been interested on getting onto another airplane in July or August….even though I am a KAPA! (See image below Montana shot.)

I did take a quick 1000-mile drive up to my home town in Eastern Montana in early August — to memorialize a childhood friend. Meeting and sitting with old swimming buddies for a few hours made the whole trip so very wonderful. I had not seen many of these folks since we all graduated from college….and that was in the ’60’s.

TEAM ONE has been meeting with me weekly, and our group keeps increasing because of requests to help us build ONE CANCER PLACE.
THIS is exciting! We are using the KAPA theme to describe the membership in ONE PLACE, and aspiring KAPAs seem to like it.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my little check-in with you this weekend. And I hope that you’ll comment back!

happy last week before Summer’s End!

erika