Sunday, September 21, 2014

Yes! No breast cancer for two decades


Jet-lagged but happy, Nancy Fox is marking 20 years of being free of 'the Big C'


Nancy Fox poses in corset and crinoline
hoop skirt at the Victoria and Albert
Museum’s dressing room in London.
I, Woody Weingarten, author of the VitalityPress book, "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer," and my wife, Nancy Fox, just returned to the San Francisco Bay Area from London and Paris.

We’re jet-lagged but extremely happy.

While in Europe we celebrated her 20 years of being free of 'the Big C' — and her Big Number birthday (75).

We also managed to tour and party with one of Nancy’s cousins she hadn’t seen in 44 years, her prom date (whom she’d reconnected with at their 50th high school reunion), a loquacious ex-pat writer-buddy of mine, the daughter of an old friend, and a guy and a gal pal from Northern California’s Marin County.

Woody Weingarten and Nancy Fox 
stand in front of the Eiffel Tower, 
one of those paths more traveled.
We, as might be expected by anyone who knows us at all, now and then veered from the paths more traveled. For example, we:

• Reveled in a two-hour tour of street art (graffiti, mainly).
• Traveled the serene canals of London in a 108-year-old boat that used to be pulled by horses.
• Sat in on a session of England’s House of Commons (where opposition members verbally chastise men and women they call “my distinguished colleague”), and two be-wigged court trials in Old Bailey (one for credit-card fraud, the other for rape).
• Visited one antique musical instrument museum in Paris and a second in London.
• Saw the best light show ever, when computer graphics were projected onto the Rouen Cathedral that had been recreated non-digitally so many times by impressionist painter Claude Monet.

A journey to remember. For sure.

Book for partners of breast cancer patients


It's time to celebrate: Book is ready about male caregivers for breast cancer patients


Hooray!
This website is alive and well. After, in a sense, a mere 20 years of preparation.

Brava!
Nancy Fox, the courageous heroine of my upcoming non-fiction VitalityPress book "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer," also is alive and well. A lengthy, healthy 20 years after she — my wife — was diagnosed with the disease.

Hurrah!
I, Woody Weingarten, the book’s author, am alive and well, too. After half a century as a professional journalist and a two-decade stint leading a support group for males whose partners had to cope with the life-threatening malady and its aftermath.

Look for Rollercoaster. It's available on Amazon, and from brick-and-mortar stores as well.

Hallelujah!