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Christina Gleason, M.A., Digital Media Creator

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My Dad Has Mantle Cell Lymphoma

November 11, 2010 By Christina Gleason 42 Comments

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SCREW Non-Hodgkins LymphomaI’ve been a bit out of sorts lately because we found out a month ago that my dad has cancer. He’d gone to Urgent Care because he had trouble swallowing. His voice sounded funny, too. Urgent Care sent him to an ENT straight away. That doctor told him later that he presented like someone with throat cancer, but when he’d looked down his throat, it looked like he had a smooth cyst, so he didn’t mention cancer. He just got him scheduled for surgery to remove the cyst.

When he went in for surgery the next week, what was supposed to be a 20-minute procedure took about an hour and a half because they were having difficulty getting the tube down his throat because the mass was so big. It wasn’t smooth like the doctor had originally thought; it was spongy. So when the doctor came out to talk to my mom, he told her quite certainly that it was cancer.

The doctor removed the 3x2x1 cm tumor and sent it out for biopsy. At his follow-up appointment, we learned that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but anything more specific required more testing. An appointment was made with an oncologist at New York Oncology Hematology (NYOH).

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Filed Under: Christina's Thoughts Tagged With: cancer, personal

How the Economy Stole Christmas

December 28, 2009 By Christina Gleason 4 Comments

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I’m happy to say that I’m doing fairly well here for myself. Santa was good to my son this year. But we had a major disappointment hit the family when my brother couldn’t get my sister-in-law and niece here for Christmas as they’d planned. It would have been the first year they’d made it up for Thanksgiving or Christmas since our grandpa died in 2006. The economy wasn’t really to blame for their inability to make it here… the snowstorm that hit the East Coast was responsible. They only made it six hours into the drive from Georgia to New York before the snow hit and they were stranded in Virginia on I-81. They slept in the car that night and ended up turning around to go back home.

But the real downer was that – not only did they lose their house – but they can’t even rent a new place. I’ll try to make a long story short. My brother was in real estate. He got his realtor’s license and was working in the booming Georgia housing business. Then the economy tanked and no one could get financed. My brother was working but didn’t get paid for about a year. My sister-in-law got laid off from her job. They had an infant daughter to raise and no income. They fell behind on their mortgage payments while my brother looked for more work.

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Filed Under: Christina's Thoughts

10 Lessons I Learned From NaNoWriMo

December 1, 2009 By Christina Gleason 3 Comments

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nano_09_winner_120x240If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, you’re obviously not a writer. NaNoWriMo is the shorthand term for National Novel Writing Month, an annual event where aspiring novelists gear up to write an entire 50,000+ word novel in the month of November. It’s something I’d tried doing before, but always ended up dropping out before I’d really gotten started.

This year? I did it. And I feel like a masochist, especially since I started over on November 14. My first attempt had hit a dead end. I reached 50,086 words at 11:39 pm last night with 21 minutes to spare. So what have I learned?

  1. Fiction is hard.
  2. Characters don’t always do what you want them to do.
  3. Knowing how the story ends doesn’t really help you get through the middle any easier.
  4. The built-in thesaurus feature is awesome.
  5. It’s insanely difficult not to edit as you’re writing.
  6. It takes longer to write 1,000 words of fiction than 1,000 words of non-fiction.
  7. Family members need to disappear when it’s writing time.
  8. Asking me “How’s it coming?” when I’m in the middle of typing will make me lose my train of thought – and then get very angry at you.
  9. Writing 5,000 words in a sitting turns your brain to mush.
  10. It feels good to be done!

How about you? If you participated in NaNoWriMo, what did you learn – about writing and about yourself?

Filed Under: Christina's Thoughts Tagged With: NaNoWriMo, writer

This One Goes Out to the Veterans

November 11, 2009 By Christina Gleason 1 Comment

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To all the veterans who have served our country and helped to keep us safe so that we don’t have to live in fear – THANK YOU. Happy Veteran’s Day.

I wish I had thought to ask my grandpa about his time in the service when he was still alive. Now that he’s gone, I only have a few details from the documents my grandma kept. Leaving his name out, I’d like to share them with you. I’ve tried to find out more information about what his unit did, but there has been precious little I could find online. (All information I’ve found pertaining to the 40th Tank Battalion is from WWII.) What I do know is that he was deployed to Germany shortly after the end of the Korean War.

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Filed Under: Christina's Thoughts Tagged With: personal

May 12 is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) Awareness Day

May 12, 2009 By Christina Gleason 22 Comments

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Today is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Awareness Day, something that means a lot to me. In case you didn’t know already, I have CFS. I don’t keep it a secret. I feel it’s better to be open about my illness than to hide it. I know my limitations, but I also know what I’m capable of.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

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Filed Under: Christina's Thoughts Tagged With: chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic illness

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