A break from #EpicCaldwellVacay for a moment (which HAS been epic so far, more on that later) to remind ourselves that cancer never takes a vacation. 

While in New York, I learned that my dear friend from Twitter, @LuluChange, had died from metastatic breast cancer. I first met Lulu on Twitter, but we also met in person twice: once at the Living Beyond Breast Cancer conference in April 2015, and once in Seattle in summer 2015. There are a lot of tough broads in the world of MBC, but Lulu was one of the toughest, maybe because she was so determined not to let cancer define her life. She was a professor at a college in Colorado, and she taught right up through spring semester this year because her career was important to her, as were her adult children. When I think of Lulu, I’ll always remember her as deeply committed to changing the world of MBC, and refusing to let people paint a rosy picture of breast cancer. Twitter seems an emptier world without her.

And just today, I learned that my dear friend Jill Cohen, a fellow Hear My Voice graduate and Seattleite, has entered hospice. Jill’s blog, Dancing with Cancer, was the first blog I found when I was diagnosed with MBC, and it gave me so much hope. She lived with MBC for 14 years–in fact, last summer she threw a bat mitzvah for her mets, because come on, that’s funny–and she had the most amazing attitude about her disease. She told me that not long after she was diagnosed, she had a dream that there was a party at her house and the guests were being too loud and keeping her awake. So she told them they could stay, but only if they’d keep it down. And that’s how she viewed her cancer: it could stay, but only if it kept quiet. Unfortunately, her cancer isn’t quiet anymore, so it looks like the party that has been Jill’s life is coming to an end. I’m going to miss her at our local support group meetings, and I’ll always remember her and her husband sitting on our deck enjoying some Seattle sunshine during our last visit together.

All the rest of you metsters: please, no more bad news while I’m away. Just hang on a couple more weeks, OK? And know that I wish I could hug all of you as our community suffers these loses.