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The beast first showed its face benignly, in the late-June warmth of a California swimming pool, and it would take me more than a year to know it for what it was. Willie and I were lolling happily in the sunny shallow end of my in-laws' pool when he—then only seven—said, "Mommy, you're getting thinner."
It was true, I realized with some pleasure. Those intractable 10 or 15 pounds that had settled in over the course of two pregnancies: hadn't they seemed, lately, to be melting away? I had never gained enough weight to think about trying very hard to lose it, except for sporadic, failed commitments to the health club. But I'd carried—for so many years I hardly noticed it—an unpleasant sensation of being more cushiony than I wanted to be. And now, without trying, I'd lost at least five pounds, perhaps even eight.
I suppose I fell into the smug assumption that I had magically restored the lucky metabolism of my 20s and 30s, when it had been easy for me to carry between 110 and 120 pounds on a frame of five feet six inches. True, in the months before Willie's observation, I'd been working harder, and more happily, than I had in years—burning more fuel through later nights and busier days. I'd also been smoking, an old habit I'd fallen into again two years earlier, bouncing back and forth between quitting and succumbing, working up to something like eight cigarettes a day.
Of course Willie noticed it first, I now think: children major in the study of their mothers, and Willie has the elder child's umbilical awareness of me. But how is it that I didn't even question a weight loss striking enough for a child to speak up about? I was too happy enjoying this unexpected gift to question it even briefly: the American woman's yearning for thinness is so deeply a part of me that it never crossed my mind that a weight loss could herald something other than good fortune.
As it happened, I took up running about a month later, in concert with quitting smoking for good. By the end of the summer I was running about four miles a day, at least five days a week. And with all that exercise I found I could eat pretty much anything I wanted without worrying about my weight. So more weight melted away, and the steady weight loss that might have warned me something was going badly wrong disguised itself instead as the reward for all those pounding steps I was taking through the chill of early fall, the sting of winter, the beauty of spring's beginning. I went from around 126 pounds, in the spring of 2000, to about 109 a year later.
Somewhere in there my period became irregular—first it was late, then it stopped altogether. Well, I'd heard of this: women who exercise heavily sometimes do become amenorrheic. I discussed it with my gynecologist in January, and he agreed it was no real cause for alarm. He checked my hormone levels and found I definitely hadn't hit perimenopause, but what I most remember about that visit is the amazed approval with which he commented on the good shape I was in.
Around that time—I can't pinpoint exactly when—I began to have hot flashes, almost unnoticeable at first, gradually increasing in intensity. Well, I said to myself, I must be perimenopausal after all; a gynecologist friend told me that hormone levels can fluctuate so much that the test my doctor had done wasn't necessarily the last word on the subject.
Then one day in April I was lying on my back, talking idly on the telephone (strangely, I don't remember to whom), and running my hand up and down my now deliciously scrawny stomach. And just like that I felt it: a mass, about the size of a small apricot, on the lower right side of my abdomen. My mind swung sharply into focus: Have I ever felt this thing before, this lump? Well, who knows, maybe this is a part of my anatomy I was just never aware of before—I had always had a little layer of fat between my skin and the mysteries of the innards. Maybe there was some part of the intestine that felt that way, and I had just never been thin enough to notice it before.
You know how you've always wondered about it: Would you notice if you had a sudden lump? Would you be sensible enough to do something about it? How would your mind react? For all of us, those wonderings have a luxuriantly melodramatic quality. Because surely that isn't really how it works; you don't just stumble onto the fact that you have a lethal cancer while you're gabbing on the phone like a teenager. Surely you can't have a death sentence so close to the surface, just resting there, without your being in some other way aware of it.
I thought about calling my doctor, but then remembered that I had a full checkup scheduled in about three weeks anyway; I would bring it up then. In the intervening weeks I often reached down to find this odd bump: sometimes it wasn't there, and at other times it was. Once, I even thought it had moved—could I possibly be feeling it three inches up and two inches to the left, nearly underneath my belly button? Surely not. This must be just another sign that I was imagining things.
Checkup day came. I had been seeing the same doctor for at least a decade. I'd chosen him casually, foolishly, at a time in my life when having a general practitioner didn't seem like a very important decision. For most of the past decade almost all my health-care issues had taken me to the office of my obstetrician, the man who delivered my two babies. To him I felt infinitely bonded. And because he had tested my health so diligently—and appropriately for a mother who had her first baby at 35—I hadn't really seen the need, for years, for a general checkup.
So this doctor I was seeing now had never had to see me through anything serious. But he had always handled what little I brought to him with sympathy and dispatch; I had a mild liking for him.
To begin the checkup, he ushered me into his office, fully clothed, to talk. I told him about all of it: the stopped periods, the hot flashes, the fact that I could intermittently feel a mass in my belly. But I also told him what seemed most true to me: that overall I felt healthier than I'd been in years.
Right off the bat, Dr. Generalist advised me to press the matter of hot flashes, and of the vanished period, with my gynecologist. No Hormones Handled Here. Then he ushered me into his examining room next door, with the standard instruction to dress in a flimsy robe while he stepped out of the room. He inspected me in all the typical ways, then told me to get back in my clothes and step back into his office. I had to remind him that I had reported a strange lump in my abdomen. So he had me lie back down, and felt all around that area. No mass. He got me to feel there, too; it was one of those times when I couldn't feel it.
"I would think," he said, "that what you're feeling is stool that's moving through your bowel. What you're feeling is a loop of intestine or something where the stool is stuck for a while. That's why sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not. The bad things don't come and go; the bad things only come and stay." He could send me off for a lot of tests, he said, but there really wasn't any point in going to that trouble and expense, because I was so obviously a perfectly healthy patient. He repeated all the same information in a letter mailed to me the following week after my blood tests came back: Healthy healthy healthy.
Looking back, I know I was uneasy even after I got this clean bill of health. Sometimes I sensed what seemed like a flicker of movement in my belly, and got the oddest feeling that I might be pregnant. (At one point, I even bought a home pregnancy test and furtively took it in a stall in the ladies' room in the little mall that housed the pharmacy.) Every now and then, the mass in my abdomen actually stuck out when I lay on my back; once, I looked down to see my stomach distinctly tilted—high on the right side, much lower on the left. I was at some pains never to point this out to my husband, Tim.
Finally, on the last Friday night in June 2001, I had a huge hot flash while my husband was tickling my back, in bed. Suddenly I was drenched; I could feel that his fingers could no longer slide easily along the skin of my back. He turned to me, astonished: "What is this?" he asked. "You're covered in sweat."
It was as if someone had at last given me permission to notice fully what was happening inside me. I made an appointment with my gynecologist—the earliest one I could get was the next week, on Thursday, July 5—and began deliberately noticing how overwhelming the hot flashes had gotten. Now that I was paying close attention, I realized they were coming 15 or 20 times a day, sweeping over and through me and leaving me sheathed in a layer of sweat. They came when I ran, making my joyous morning run a tedious slog that must be gotten through; they came when I sat still. They exceeded anything that had been described to me as the gradual coming of menopause. This was more like walking into a wall. On both Monday and Tuesday of that week, I remember, I stopped about two miles into my morning run, simply stopped, despite the freshness of the morning and the beauty of the path I usually cut through the gardened streets of Takoma Park. Any runner knows the feeling of having to push past the body's observation that it might be more fun to walk slowly home and pop open a beer (just keep putting one foot in front of the other), but this was something different, like an override system I could no longer ignore. It said: Stop. It said: This is a body that can no longer afford to run.
My gynecologist's office is way, way out in the long exurban belt stretching westward from D.C. Pat was running late that afternoon, so it was probably after five when he finally called me into his office. I told him about the hot flashes, and about the lump I was feeling in my abdomen. "Yup, you're in menopause," he said somewhat brusquely. "We can start giving you hormones, but first let's check out that lump you say you're feeling."
We went into the examining room, where he keeps his ultrasound equipment. He'd given me dozens of quick exams with it over my childbearing years. I hopped up on the table, and he slapped on some of the chilly goo they apply to your belly, to make the ultrasound mouse slide over your skin, and almost immediately he stopped: "There," he said. "Yeah, there's something here." He looked at it a bit more, very briefly, then started snapping off his gloves. His face looked as neutral as he could possibly make it, which alarmed me instantly. "Just so you know," he said quickly, "it's probably fibroids. I'm not thinking cancer, but I am thinking surgery. So get dressed and come on back to my office, and I'll explain."
We sat back down on opposite sides of his desk. But before we talked, he called out to his receptionist, who was just packing up for the evening. "Before you go," he said, "I need you to book her an ultrasound and a CT scan. Tomorrow, if possible."
I told Pat he was scaring me: what was all this speed about if he wasn't thinking cancer?
"Well," he said, "I'm pretty sure it's not—I'll explain why in a minute—but I hate to have something like this hanging over a weekend. I want to know for sure what we're dealing with."
He went on to explain that he'd seen what looked like a fairly large growth on my ovary, but that it didn't look like ovarian cancer; its consistency was different. (Here, he drew me a picture on the back of a piece of scrap paper.) He explained that fibroids can sometimes be removed with surgery but that very often they grew back, even worse than before. His own typical recommendation, for a woman who was done having babies, he said, was a hysterectomy.
"Does this have anything to do with my hot flashes?" I asked.
"No, not a thing, in all probability. You just happen to be starting menopause, too."
I felt on the verge of tears. When I left, I sat in the car to collect myself, boggling at the thought of losing my uterus at the age of 43. I didn't even call my husband on my cell phone. I just wanted to calm down and get home and then seek the sanctuary of his sympathy.
The next morning, Pat's office called to say they had scored a formal ultrasound examination at three in the afternoon, in a D.C. radiology practice I'd visited from time to time before. When I got there, Pat's nurse told me, they would give me an appointment—probably early the next week—to come back for a CT scan.
I told my husband I didn't need him to come to the sonogram: it would probably only give a clearer picture of what Pat's ultrasound had already told us, I assumed. There's nothing painful or difficult about a sonogram, and I didn't want to haul Tim out of work twice; I knew I'd want him with me for the CT scan later.
That was a bad decision.
I remember waiting endlessly at the desk for the receptionist to finish a peckish, convoluted phone conversation with the manager of the garage downstairs, about why she'd been billed wrong for that month's parking. She talked on and on ("Yes, I know that's what I owe for each month, but I already paid you for both June and July"), with zero self-consciousness about keeping a patient standing there at the desk. There was a sign that instructed one to sign in and then take a seat, but, of course, I needed to talk to her about scheduling the CT scan after the sonogram. She kept flicking her hand at me and trying to shoo me toward a chair, then pointing at the sign. I just waited.
Finally I told her why I was standing there: "Um, CAT scan … The doctor's office told me … as soon as possible … "
"What are you?" she said. A puzzled silence. "I mean, what kind are you?"
"Well, um, they're looking at something in my pelvis—"
"Oh, body," she said, her scowl regathering. "We are really, really booked on bodies." She started to flip through her appointment book. I stood there, trying to radiate as palatable a combination of charm and distress as I could manage. "Well, I'll talk to the doctor," she finally mumbled. "Ask me again when your sonogram's done. We might be able to do Monday morning, 11 o'clock."
When my father was under treatment for cancer, which put him in and out of various hospitals for five years, I used to roll my eyes at the way he ingratiated himself with all the staff. You could walk into intensive care and he'd be there, his face wan against the pillow, but with his usual charming, modest smile ready for everyone. He would introduce his nurse and tell you where she was born, and how her sister wrote romance novels, and that her brother was on a track-and-field scholarship at the State University of New York.
Part and parcel, I thought, of his lifelong campaign to be loved by everyone he met. He had always put more energy into captivating strangers than anyone else I knew.
But I learned right away, when I went for this very first test, how wrong I'd been. As a patient, you come to feel that you need everyone—from the chairman of the oncology service at a major cancer center down to the least-paid clerk in the admissions department—to like you. Some of them may have the power to save your life. Others have the power to make you comfortable in the middle of the night, or to steer away from you the nurse-in-training who is still just learning to insert IVs, or to squeeze you in for a test you might otherwise wait days for.
I was discovering this truth on my back, while the ultrasound technician guided her wand through the chilly gel she had squeezed onto my belly. She was a friendly young woman with a Spanish accent of some kind, and her job was to get an accurate picture of what was going on in my pelvis while divulging the least information possible to the anxious patient. My job was to find out as much as I could, as quickly as I could.
So there I am: "Gosh, Friday afternoon … Have you had a long week? … How long have you been working in ultrasound? … Oh! Is that my ovary there, really? … Ah, so you're taking pictures now … Uh-huh … Gee, that must be the growth my gynecologist was talking about."
Under this onslaught of niceness, the technician begins to think aloud a bit. Yes, she is seeing a growth. But usually fibroids, which grow from the outside of the uterus, move in concert with it: poke the uterus and the growth will move too. This growth seemed to be independent of the uterus.
Is it a mild chill I'm feeling, or a mild thrill? I am still reeling at the thought that I might have a hysterectomy at 43; perhaps I am thinking it would at least be fun to have something more interesting than a fibroid?
But if there is a tinge of that interest, it vanishes when she speaks again: "Huh. Here's another one." And another. Suddenly, we are seeing three strange round plants that yield to a mild shove, but don't behave like anything she's ever seen before. She is doubly skeptical now about the fibroid theory. My gynecologist had examined me in detail the previous January, so much of what we're looking at has to have grown within six months. Fibroids, she says, don't grow nearly that fast.
I am surprised that she is so forthcoming, but soon see that it is of little use to me: she is looking at something she's never seen before. She summons the doctor—the chief radiologist in the practice—who in turn summons a younger colleague she is training. They all crowd around the machine in fascination.
Again, we do the poking-the-uterus exercise. We try the trans-vaginal sonography wand. Their mystification has begun to make me seriously frightened. I begin to question the doctor very directly. She is quite kind. She really can't say what she's seeing, she tells me.
It almost seems an afterthought—the indulgence of a hunch—when the doctor turns to the technician and says, "Try moving up, yes, to the navel or so." I can still remember the feel of the equipment casually gliding up toward my navel, and then a sudden, palpable tension in the air. For, immediately, another large growth— one even bigger than the three below—looms into view.
This is the moment when I know for certain that I have cancer. Without anyone's even looking very hard, this exam has been turning up mysterious blobs in every quarter. I go very still as the doctor begins directing the technician to turn here, look there. Her voice has dropped almost to a whisper, and I don't want to distract her with my anxious questions: I can hold them long enough for her to find out what I need to know.
But then I hear one of them mumble to the other, "You see there? There is some ascites … ," and I feel panic wash through me. Along with my sisters, I nursed my mother through her death from a liver illness, and I know that ascites is the fluid that collects around the liver when it is badly diseased.
"Are you finding something on my liver too?" I croak.
"Yes, something, we're not sure what," says the doctor, pressing a sympathetic hand to my shoulder. And then suddenly I'm aware that they've made a decision to stop this exam. What's the point in finding more? They've found out enough to know that they need the more subtle diagnostic view of a CT scan.
"Is there a case to be made against my freaking out now?" I ask.
Well, yes, replies the doctor. There's a lot we don't know; there's a lot we need to find out; it could be a great range of different things, some of which would be better than others.
"But then let me ask you this way," I press. "Do you know of anything other than cancer that could give rise to the number of growths we just saw? Could it be anything benign?"
"Well, no," she says. "Not that I'm aware of. But we'll be sure to work you in Monday morning for a CT scan, and then we'll know a lot more. I'm going to call your doctor now, and then I assume you'd like to talk to him after me?"
She shows me to a private office to wait; she will let me know when I should pick up the phone there. In the meantime, I choose a free phone line and dial my husband's cell phone. I have caught him somewhere on the street. There is a huge noise behind him; he can barely hear me.
"I need you—" I begin, barely in control of my voice. "I need you to get in a cab and come to the Foxhall medical building."
This is what he says: "O.K." He doesn't say, "What's wrong?" He doesn't ask, "What did the test show?" It is my first glimpse of the miraculous generosity that will help me get through everything that is about to happen. He can tell how tenuous my control is; he can tell that I need him; he has agreed without speech to hold the anxiety of knowing nothing more for the 20 minutes it will take him to get here.
After this, I talk briefly with my gynecologist on the phone. Pat's first words are "What time's your CT scan? I'm going to cancel all my Monday-morning appointments and come to your scan." I have never heard of a doctor coming to a CAT scan before this. It foretells the huge seams of good fortune that will run through the black rock of the next three years. There is nothing like having a doctor who really cares about you—who can speed up the inhuman pace of medical time, which usually leaves patients begging to hear their test results, waiting too many days for an appointment, at a loss until the conveyor belt brings along the next hurried intervention. Pat is one of the doctors who are willing to break the rules: Here is my cell-phone number—call me anytime this weekend. We will figure out together what to do on Monday.
Somehow, my husband and I stagger through the weekend. Every hour or so one of us steals away to a computer to re- or misdiagnose for the 14th time. The truth is we know for sure I have some kind of cancer, and that any cancer that has metastasized is bad, and that that is all we will know for a few more days.
Finally, Monday comes. After the CT scan, Pat takes me directly to the hospital to get prodded by his favorite surgeon, whom I'll call Dr. Goodguy. ("The surgeon I'd take my own family to," Pat says.) In the examining room, Dr. Goodguy frowns over my films, palpates my abdomen, interviews me, and schedules me for both an M.R.I. that afternoon and a biopsy two days later. I think to ask how big all these growths are. Several oranges and even one grapefruit, Dr. Goodguy says, my first inkling that citrus metaphor is essential to cancer treatment.
Being a patient requires that you master the Zen of living in hospital time, tuning out as much as possible while also demanding a constant vigilance, because some people really will screw up your treatment if you're not paying strict attention. When I go for my M.R.I., the technician—a lovely, smiling man with a very uncertain command of English—seems very vague about what, exactly, he's supposed to be examining. I insist that he call Dr. Goodguy's office.
Pat and Dr. Goodguy have been scratching their heads. What could possibly grow so fast, and so widely? Probably—maybe—lymphoma. They keep telling me this, which would be the good news, because lymphomas are increasingly treatable. My gynecologist friend, Laura, has told me the same thing over the weekend. My psychotherapist nods at the wisdom of this off-the-cuff prognosis. I find myself on the point of hysterical laughter. How many more people, I wonder, are going to tell me, Congratulations! You've got lymphoma!!
By Thursday afternoon this is no longer funny. I've had a biopsy the previous day, and Dr. Goodguy calls about three p.m. He has a Very Serious Doctor Voice on, and jumps right in: "Well, this isn't good. It's not lymphoma. Your pathology report shows that your tumor is consistent with hepatoma, which is, uh, which is liver cancer." Already I am struggling: does "consistent with" mean they think that but they don't really know it? No, those are just scientific weasel words they use in pathology reports. (A pathologist, I will learn, would look at your nose and report that it is consistent with a breathing apparatus.)
I know this diagnosis is very, very bad. Liver cancer is one of the possibilities I researched in my compulsive tours of the Internet over the weekend, so I already know it's one of the worst things you can have. Still, I say to the doctor, "Well, how bad is that?"
"I won't avoid it. It's very serious."
"And it would presumably be bad news that it's already created other tumors around my body?"
"Yes. Yes, that is a bad sign."
A lovely man, who's doing a hard job with a patient he just met three days before. There are at least five large metastases of the cancer in my pelvis and abdomen, and the mother ship—a tumor the size of a navel orange—straddles the channel where the major blood vessels run into and out of the liver. Tumors so widespread automatically "stage" my cancer at IV(b). There is no V, and there is no (c).
When I hang up the phone I call Tim and tell him. We make it as clinical a conversation as possible, because otherwise there will be so much feeling it might stand in the way of acting. He is on his way home, right away.
I call my friend Liz and tell her. I tell her some of the statistics—that, as I read the data, I may be dead by Christmas. Liz almost always says the perfect thing, from the heart, and now she says the two things I most need to hear. The first is "I want you to know that, whatever happens, I will be with you the whole way."
The second is "And you know that all of us—but this is my promise—we will all work to keep you alive in your children's minds." Now tears are pouring down my cheeks, and they feel good.
The drama of discovery and diagnosis happened so long ago, and has been followed by so many drastic plot twists, that it feels to me like ancient history. But I've noticed that almost everyone I talk to is very curious to know those details. Whenever the whim of disease takes me into the view of a new doctor or nurse, we fall into the standard, boring rhythm of summarizing history and condition (when diagnosed; at what stage; what treatments have been administered since, with what results). If the person I'm talking to is young and relatively inexperienced, I may find myself more schooled in this procedure even than she or he is. But there always comes a moment when their professionalism suddenly drops, their clipboards drift to their sides, and they say, "Uhn, how—do you mind if I ask you how you happened to find out you had cancer?" I realize at these times that they are asking as fellow humans, not too much younger than I am, and their fascination is the same as everyone else's: Could this happen to me? How would I know? What would that feel like?
We have all indulged this curiosity, haven't we? What would I do if I suddenly found I had a short time to live … What would it be like to sit in a doctor's office and hear a death sentence? I had entertained those fantasies just like the next person. So when it actually happened, I felt weirdly like an actor in a melodrama. I had—and still sometimes have—the feeling that I was doing, or had done, something faintly self-dramatizing, something a bit too attention-getting. (I was raised by people who had a horror of melodrama, but that's another part of the story.)
In two months I will mark the finish of year 3 B.T.—my third year of Borrowed Time. (Or, as I think of it on my best days, Bonus Time.) When I was diagnosed with Stage IV(b) liver cancer in early July of 2001, every doctor was at great pains to make clear to me that this was a death sentence. Unless you find liver cancer early enough to have a surgeon cut out the primary tumor before it spreads, you have little chance of parole. The five-year survival rate for those who can't have surgery is less than 1 percent; my cancer had spread so widely that I was facing a prognosis somewhere between three and six months. I was 43; my children were 5 and 8.
Liver cancer is so untreatable because chemotherapy has little effect. There are other, localized treatments that can slow the growth of the main tumor, or tumors, in the liver. (They pump chemo through an artery directly into the tumors and block the exits; they ablate them with radio-frequency waves; they freeze them; or they install localized chemo pumps to blast them.) But if the cancer has spread, the medical textbooks say, there is no therapy that can stop it, or even slow it down much. Chemo has about a 25 to 30 percent chance of having any impact, and even then it will almost always be a small and transient one: a slight and temporary shrinkage, a short pause in the cancer's growth, a check on further metastases that can add to the patient's pain.
But for some reasons I know and others I don't, my body—with the help of six hospitals, dozens of drugs, a teeming multitude of smart doctors and nurses, and a heroically stubborn husband—has mounted a miraculous resistance. As seriously fucked cancer patients go, I am an astonishingly healthy woman.
I live at least two different lives. In the background, usually, is the knowledge that, for all my good fortune so far, I will still die of this disease. This is where I wage the physical fight, which is, to say the least, a deeply unpleasant process. And beyond the concrete challenges of needles and mouth sores and barf basins and barium, it has thrown me on a roller coaster that sometimes clatters up a hill, giving me a more hopeful, more distant view than I'd expected, and at other times plunges faster and farther than I think I can endure. Even when you know the plunge is coming—it's in the nature of a roller coaster, after all, and you know that you disembark on the bottom and not the top—even then, it comes with some element of fresh despair.
I've hated roller coasters all my life.
But in the foreground is regular existence: love the kids, buy them new shoes, enjoy their burgeoning wit, get some writing done, plan vacations with Tim, have coffee with my friends. Having found myself faced with that old bull-session question (What would you do if you found out you had a year to live?), I learned that a woman with children has the privilege or duty of bypassing the existential. What you do, if you have little kids, is lead as normal a life as possible, only with more pancakes.
This is the realm of life in which I make intensely practical decisions—almost, these three years on, without thinking about it. When we bought a new car last fall, I chose it, bargained for it, and paid for it with the last of an old retirement account my father had left me. And then I registered it only in my husband's name—because who needs the hassles over title if he decides to sell it later? When an old crown at the back of my lower right jaw began to disintegrate last summer, I looked at my dentist, whose fastidiousness I have relied on for almost 20 years, and said, Jeff, look: I'm doing O.K. right now, but I've got every reason to think it would be foolish to sink $4,000 into, um, infrastructure at this point. Is there anything sort of half-assed and inexpensive we could do, just to get by?
Sometimes I feel immortal: whatever happens to me now, I've earned the knowledge some people never gain, that my span is finite, and I still have the chance to rise, and rise, to life's generosity. But at other times I feel trapped, cursed by my specific awareness of the guillotine blade poised above my neck. At those times I resent you—or the seven other people at dinner with me, or my husband, deep in sleep beside me—for the fact that you may never even catch sight of the blade assigned to you.
Sometimes I simply feel horror, that most elementary thing. The irreducible fear, for me, is the fantasy that I will by some mistake be imprisoned in my body after dying. As a child I never enjoyed a minute of any campfire stories of the buried-alive genre. And even without that unwelcome and vivid fear in my mind, I can't find any way around the horror of being left alone down there in the dark, picked apart by processes about which I'm a little bit squeamish even when they're just fertilizing my daylilies. Intellectually, I know it won't matter to me in the slightest. But my most primal fear is that somehow my consciousness will be carelessly left behind among my remains.
But, of course, I am already being killed, by one of nature's most common blunders. And these blunt fears are easily deconstructed as a form of denial: if I'm stuck alive in my coffin, well, that will in some sense override the final fact of my death, no? I can see these dread-filled fantasies as the wishes they are: that I really can stay in this body I love; that my consciousness really will run on past my death; that I won't just … die.
There are a million lesser fears. The largest category concerns my children, and weighs both the trivial and the serious. I fear that my Alice will never really learn to wear tights. (You'd think, from watching my husband try to help her into them on the rare occasion when he's asked, that he'd been asked to perform a breech birth of twin colts at the peak of a blizzard). That no one will ever really brush her fine, long hair all the way through, and that she will display a perpetual bird's nest at the back of her neck. (And—what? People will say her slatternly mother should have drummed better Hair Care into her family's minds before selfishly dying of cancer?) That no one will ever put up curtains in my dining room, the way I've been meaning to for the last three years.
Deeper: Who will talk to my darling girl when she gets her period? Will my son sustain that sweet enthusiasm he seems to beam most often at me? There are days I can't look at them—literally, not a single time—without wondering what it will do to them to grow up without a mother. What if they can't remember what I was like? What if they remember, and grieve, all the time?
What if they don't?
But even this obvious stuff, the dread and sorrow, make up a falsely simple picture. Sometimes, early on, death was a great dark lozenge that sat bittersweet on my tongue for hours at a time, and I savored the things I'd avoid forever. I'll never have to pay taxes, I thought, or go to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I won't have to see my children through the worst parts of adolescence. I won't have to be human, in fact, with all the error and loss and love and inadequacy that come with the job.
I won't have to get old.
It says a lot about the power of denial that I could so automatically seek (and find!) the silver lining that might come with dying of cancer in my 40s. For good and ill, I no longer think that way. The passage of time has brought me the unlikely ability to work, simultaneously, at facing my death and loving my life.
Often it is lonely work. And I have nothing happy to impart about the likelihood that I will have to take chemotherapy for the rest of my life—nothing, except that I should be so lucky. But I am now, after a long struggle, surprisingly happy in the crooked, sturdy little shelter I've built in the wastes of Cancerland. Here, my family has lovingly adapted to our awful tumble in fortune. And here, I nurture a garden of 11 or 12 different varieties of hope, including the cramped, faint, strangely apologetic hope that, having already done the impossible, I will somehow attain the unattainable cure.
Our first stop, after I received my diagnosis, was the office of my G.P., the one who missed all the signs and symptoms of my disease. We were not feeling especially confident in his skills, but we thought he might have ideas about treatment, and could at least perform the service of doing a full set of blood tests.
As we were driving over to Dr. Generalist, Tim turned to me at a stoplight and said, "I just want you to know: I'm going to be a total prick." What he meant by this was that there was no log he wouldn't roll, no connection he wouldn't tap, no pull he wouldn't use. Tim, a fellow journalist, is a man who would rather swallow gravel than use a job title to get a good table at a restaurant. But within an hour of hearing the bad news, he had scored me an appointment early the next Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in New York City, one of the country's most eminent cancer-treatment centers. Tim had done this by the simple expedient of calling Harold Varmus, president and chief executive officer of M.S.K.C.C., with whom we'd formed a warm but very tangential friendship when Harold was in Washington running the National Institutes for Health during the Clinton administration. These are the kinds of appointments, I was to learn, that some people wait weeks or even months for. I say that not in the spirit of a boast, only as a reminder that in this way, as in most others, medicine is unfair—rationed in fundamentally irrational ways. But when your own time comes, you will pull pretty much every string available to get what you need.
By the next morning—it was still only the day after my diagnosis—I had a noon appointment with the topmost G.I. oncologist available at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center, which is in Baltimore, a little less than an hour from our house. This conquest of the appointment book was the doing of another friend, one of my bosses. We also got an appointment at the National Cancer Institute for later the following week.
So I had all the appointments I needed, and a husband who did yeoman legwork running from place to place getting copies of M.R.I.'s and CT scans and pathologists' reports and blood tests. If speed was needed in my case, I was well on my way to a record pace.
Just one problem: all this moving and shaking, driving to Baltimore and flying to New York, took us to the very same brick wall. In strode the doctor (usually trailing a retinue of students) to meet me, ask me a little about the onset of my disease. Out he went with my films under his arm, to look at them in privacy. In he came, quietly, his pace slowed and his face grim. He said some version of what the oncologist at Hopkins had said: "I couldn't believe—I just told my colleague, 'There is no way she looks sick enough to have this degree of disease. Someone blew this diagnosis.' Then I looked at this M.R.I."
It fell to the man at Hopkins to be the first to tell us just how bad my situation was. But they all said more or less the same thing: The Hopkins doc did it while focusing intently on the shape of his cuticles, turning his fingers in and then splaying them forward like a bride showing off her new rock. Another did it while holding my hand and looking sweetly into my face. "My dear," this one said, "you're in desperate trouble." One did it in the midst of a completely impenetrable lecture on the chemistry of chemotherapy. One did it with a look of panic on his face.
What it boiled down to was: We have nothing to do for you. You can't have surgery, because there's so much disease outside the liver. You're not a good candidate for any of the newer interventional strategies, and we can't do radiation, because we'd destroy too much viable liver tissue. All we can do is chemotherapy, and to be honest, we really don't expect much in the way of results.
The first time we heard this lecture, at Hopkins, we stepped blinking into the sunshine of a hot July day. "I need to take a walk," I told my husband, and we set off in the direction of Baltimore's Fell's Point neighborhood. Before long, I wanted to sit and talk. The only place we could find to sit was the concrete staircase of a public library. We sat there to absorb what we'd just heard.
"Maybe," said Tim, "the doctors at Sloan-Kettering will have something different to say."
"I doubt it," I said, out of the certainty of my Internet travels and the doctor's unambiguous pessimism. This pretty much set the pattern Tim and I would follow for the coming months: he took care of the hope, and I took care of getting ready to die.
The days fractured into lurching, indelible moments and odd details that stuck. The way the Sloan-Kettering waiting room—lush with Rockefeller-funded orchids and a plashing water sculpture—had nice rows of seats whose armrests were attached with Velcro so you could tear them away when you needed to sit and sob in your husband's arms. The black-and-white bumper sticker on the glass door of an East Side coffee shop we stopped into while killing time before an appointment: THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING, it said, in what felt like a message nailed there just for my eyes.
For the first 10 days or so, I had a necessary composure. I got to and through all those appointments. I went to my desk and put together a filing system for all the names and information that were flooding into our life. I knew I wanted to keep it together while we decided what we were going to tell the children.
But after our discouraging visit to Sloan-Kettering, I could feel the waters at the dam getting close to overflowing. We decided to stay in New York an extra night or two to take advantage of the hospital's offer of a PET scan, which might identify new tumors, or spot the regression of old ones, more quickly than a CT scan.
As we sat in that plush waiting room making this decision, it came to me that I couldn't bear to continue staying with the old friends who had put us up the night before. They were contemporaries of my parents' and very dear to me, but I couldn't face talking to anyone about this latest news, or having to be in the least bit socially adept.
Tim, who knows me so well, put his arm around me and said, "Let's not think about money. Where do you want to go?" I brightened for a moment. There might not be any treatments out there that would work for me, but, by God, New York had some fine hotels. "Mmmm … the Peninsula?" So off we went to the land of high thread counts and long baths with a TV screen just above the taps.
It's amazing how you can distract yourself in the midst of such a dramatic experience—because you can't believe such awful news 24 hours a day. So I surrendered to the pleasures of a great hotel for about a day. I had my hair washed and blow-dried, and received a pedicure in the Peninsula salon. (I still remember sitting there staring, staring at all the colors of polish I could pick from. It took on the crazy proportions of an important decision: A docile sort of peach? A very feminine light pink, which might acknowledge surrender? Hell no: I chose a violent red, brighter than fire engines, bright as lollipops.)
Then, feeling beautiful, I actually danced around the room when Tim was out, my CD headphones blasting Carly Simon in my ears. When I was done I looked out the window of our room on the eighth floor, down all those hard surfaces to the tarmac of Fifth Avenue, and wondered what it would feel like just to jump. Would it be better or worse than what I was stepping into?
That night, finally, the dam broke. I was lying in bed with Tim when I realized it was all true: I was dying. Soon I would be dead. No one else would be in it with me.
I would be the one on the bed, and when the hospice nurse stopped by, my dearest loves would retreat to the hallway and swap impressions—separated from me already. Even while still alive, I would leave their party. I lay under those wonderful sheets and felt cold to the bone. I began to cry, loud, then louder. I shouted my terror. I sobbed with my entire rib cage. Tim held me while I heaved it out this way, a titanic purging. I was so loud that I wondered why no one called the police to say there was a woman getting murdered across the hall. It felt good to let go, but that feeling was little. It was dwarfed by the recognition I had just allowed in.
We have come to think of my cancer not just as a disease but also as a locale. Cancerland is the place where at least one of us is often depressed: it is as if my husband and I hand the job back and forth without comment, the way most couples deal with child-minding or being the Saturday chauffeur.
I try to remember that I'm one of the luckiest cancer patients in America, by dint of good medical insurance, great contacts who gained me access to the best of the best among doctors, an amazing support system of friends and family, and the brains and drive to be a smart and demanding medical consumer, which is one of the very hardest things I've ever done. I'm quite sure that if I were among the 43 million of my fellow Americans who have no health insurance—let alone really good insurance—I'd be dead already. As it is, I never see a hospital bill that hasn't already been paid. And there is no co-payment on the many medications I've taken. Which is fortunate: one of them—the Neupogen with which I inject myself every day for a week after chemo to boost my bone marrow's production of white cells—costs about $20,000 a year.
For me, time is the only currency that truly counts anymore. I have weathered days of chemo-induced wretchedness and pain without a whimper, only to come unglued when some little glitch suddenly turns up to meddle with the way I had planned to use some unit of time: that this half-hour, and the contents I had planned to pour into it, are now lost to me forever seems an insupportable unfairness. Because of course any old unit of time can suddenly morph into a bloated metaphor for the rest of your time on earth, for how little you may have and how little you may control it.
Most of the time, for the past three years, even my good days have given me energy to do only one Big Thing: lunch with a friend, writing a column, a movie with the kids. Choose, choose, choose. I find myself on the phone with someone I'd love to see, and then I look at my calendar and find that, realistically, my next episode of unscheduled Free Play is five weeks off, on the far side of my next treatment, and even then there will really only be a total of about seven hours I can assign before the treatment after that. I am forced to admit that, in this cramped context, I don't actually want to spend two of these hours with the person I'm talking to. These forced choices make up one of the biggest losses of sickness.
But on the other side of this coin is a gift. I think cancer brings to most people a new freedom to act on the understanding that their time is important. My editor at The Washington Post told me, when I first got sick, that after his mother recovered from cancer his parents literally never went anywhere they didn't want to. If you have ever told yourself, breezily, that life is too short to spend any of it with your childhood neighbor's annoying husband, those words now take on the gleeful raiment of simple fact. The knowledge that time's expenditure is important, that it is up to you, is one of the headiest freedoms you will ever feel.
Some of my choices surprise me. One afternoon—a blowy day in early spring, the first day when the sun actually seemed to outpower the wind—I ducked a meeting people were counting on me to come to, and I didn't lie or apologize for my reasons, because the most pressing thing I could possibly do that afternoon was plant something purple in that little spot next to the garden gate, the one I'd been thinking about for two years.
Time, I now understand, used to be a shallow concept to me. There was the time you occupied, sometimes anxiously, in the present (a deadline in three hours, a dentist's appointment for which you were 10 minutes late); and there was your inarticulate sense of time's grander passage, and the way it changes with age.
Now time has levels and levels of meaning. For example, I have clung for a year and a half to a friend's observation that young children experience time in a different way from adults. Since a month can seem an eternity to a child, then every month I manage to live might later teem with meaning and memory for my children. This totem is all I need during times when my pockets are otherwise empty of wisdom or strength.
Since I was diagnosed, I have had an eternity of time—at least six times as much as I was supposed to have—and sometimes I think that all of that time has been gilded with my knowledge of its value. At other moments, I think sadly of how much of the past three years has been wasted by the boredom and exhaustion and enforced stillness of treatment.
Not long after my diagnosis, in the pleasant offices of one of my new doctors, a liver specialist, we finally had the obligatory conversation about how I could have gotten this cancer. "You've got no cirrhosis," he said wonderingly, ticking off the potential causes on his fingers. "You've got no hepatitis. It's wild that you look so healthy."
So how do you think I got it? I asked.
"Lady," he said, "you got hit by lightning."
My biggest fear in those early days was that death would snatch me right away. An oncologist at Sloan-Kettering had mentioned, parenthetically, that the tumor in my vena cava could give birth at any time to a blood clot, causing a fast death by way of pulmonary embolism. The tumor was too close to the heart for them to consider installing a filter that would prevent this. It would be "rational," he said, in answer to our questions, to make it a policy for me not to drive anywhere with the children in the car.
I knew, too, that the disease outside my liver had grown with incredible speed. Only a couple of weeks after diagnosis, I began having symptoms—including stomach pain bad enough to hospitalize me for two days. After watching my father's five-year battle with cancer, I was aware that a cascade of side effects could begin at any time, some of them fatal.
I wasn't ready, I said to friends. Not in the way I could be ready in, oh, three or four months. Perhaps I was kidding myself in imagining that I could compose myself if only I had a little time. But I think not entirely. I had watched my parents die three years earlier, seven weeks apart—my mother, ironically, of liver disease, and my father of an invasive cancer of unknown origin. I had a pretty good idea, I thought, of what was coming.
But from almost the first instant, my terror and grief were tinged with an odd relief. I was so lucky, I thought, that this was happening to me as late as 43, not in my 30s or my 20s. If I died soon there would be some things I'd regret not having done, and I would feel fathomless anguish at leaving my children so young. But I had a powerful sense that, for my own part, I had had every chance to flourish. I had a loving marriage. I'd known the sweet, rock-breaking, irreplaceable labor of parenthood, and would leave two marvelous beings in my place. I had known rapture, and adventure, and rest. I knew what it was to love my work. I had deep, hard-won friendships, and diverse, widespread friendships of less intensity.
I was surrounded by love.
All this knowledge brought a certain calm. I knew, intuitively, that I would have felt more panicked, more frantic, in the years when I was still growing into my adulthood. For I had had the chance to become the person it was in me to be. Nor did I waste any time wondering why. Why me? It was obvious that this was no more or less than a piece of horrible bad luck. Until then my life had been, in the big ways, one long run of good luck. Only a moral idiot could feel entitled, in the midst of such a life, to a complete exemption from bad fortune.
So now my death—as a given—dominated my relationships with all of those close to me: With my two dear, dear older sisters, to whom I was doubly bonded by the shared ordeal of helping my mother die, and with my stepmother—a contemporary of mine, who had seen my father through his five ferocious years of survival. With my best friends—who spoiled and cosseted and fed and sat with me, rounding up great brigades of clucking acquaintances to bring us dinners, saying just the right thing, and never turning aside my need to talk: especially my need to talk about when, not if. My friend Liz even went out to look over the local residential hospice, to help me work through my practical concerns about whether, with children so young, I was entitled to die at home.
Above all, of course, death saturated my life with my children—Willie, then eight, and Alice, then five. I don't think death (as opposed to illness) dominated their view of me, but it certainly barged its cackling way into my heart and mind during even the simplest of family interchanges. After talking to friends and reading several books, Tim and I had decided to handle the matter openly with them: We told them that I had cancer, and what kind. We told them about chemotherapy, and how it would make me seem even sicker than I looked then. We emphasized that they couldn't catch cancer and had nothing to do with causing it.
Beyond that, we would answer with honesty any question they asked, but wouldn't step ahead of them in forcing their knowledge of just how bad things were. When the timing of my death revealed itself, then we would have to tell them. Above all, I wanted to spare them the loss of their childhood to a constant vigilance: if they knew we would talk to them honestly, they wouldn't have to put all their energy into figuring out at every turn what new distress was agitating the air around them. Neither of them, at first, chose to ask the $64,000 question. But I couldn't lay eyes on them without seeing them swallowed by the shadow of devastation to come.
Notice, though, that I don't include my husband among those to whom my death was an imminent fact. From the moment of diagnosis, Tim rolled up his sleeves and went to work. In this way, we divided the work of assimilating our nightmare: I addressed myself to death; he held a practical insistence on life. It was the best possible thing he could have done for me, although it often separated us at the time. It could make me crazy, lying awake on the left side of the bed, wanting to talk about death, while Tim lay awake on the right side, trying to figure out the next five moves he had to make to keep me alive, and then, beyond that, to find the magic bullet in which I did not believe.
But I never thought of refusing treatment. For one thing, it was obvious that I owed my children any shot at reprieve, no matter how improbable. Also, my doctors said that even the slim prospect of mitigation was worth a try. And so, Tim and I drifted into a tacit, provisional agreement to act as if … As if, while I began chemotherapy, I were in some genuine suspense about the outcome.
Yet it made me furious anytime someone tried to cheer me up by reciting the happy tale of a sister-in-law's cousin who had liver cancer but now he's 80 and he hasn't been troubled by it in 40 years. I wanted to scream, Don't you know how sick I am? I knew how narcissistic and self-dramatizing this sounded. Still, it enraged me when anyone said, Aaanh, what do doctors know? They don't know everything. I was working so hard to accept my death: I felt abandoned, evaded, when someone insisted that I would live.
That was a deeper anger than the irritation I felt at the people—some of them important figures in my life—who had memorably inappropriate reactions. I can't count the times I've been asked what psychological affliction made me invite this cancer. My favorite New Yorker cartoon, now taped above my desk, shows two ducks talking in a pond. One of them is telling the other: "Maybe you should ask yourself why you're inviting all this duck hunting into your life right now."
One woman sent me a card to "congratulate" me on my "cancer journey," and quoted Joseph Campbell to the effect that in order to achieve the life you deserved you had to give up the life you had planned. Screw you, I thought. You give up the life you had planned.
Common wisdom insists, in answer to the awkward feelings that always accompany sickness and death, that there's really no wrong thing to say. This is entirely false. Around the same time I started treatment, my friend Mike revealed to all his friends that he had been dealing for some years with Parkinson's disease. We began a competition, by e-mail, to see who could compile the most appalling reactions.
I found my best ones in hospitals, among doctors and nurses who seemed unacquainted with—or terrified of—fear and death, who were constantly holding up the garlic of their difference from me, to ward me off even as they pretended to minister to me. There was the nurse who hissed at me, with inexplicable ire, "You have a very bad disease, you know." There was the nurse's aide at Georgetown University Hospital who trudged into my room one morning, heaved a great sigh, and said, "I tell you, I hate working the oncology floor. It's so depressing." Her aunt had died of cancer, she said, and, "boy, is that an awful disease."
At least her oddball gloom was right out there on the surface. Perhaps worst of all was the nurse in the chemo-infusion ward, with whom I fell into conversation to while away my seventh hour of chemotherapy on a gray day in late December. We talked idly about vacations we'd like to take someday. "Oh well," she said, putting down my chart and stretching kittenishly on her way out the door, "I have all the time in the world."
I had bought deeply into the pessimism of the doctors treating me. We think our culture lauds the stubborn survivor, the one who says, "I will beat this cancer," and then promptly wins the Tour de France. But the truth is that there is a staggering vulnerability in asserting one's right to hope. Even most of the doctors who have from time to time promoted my optimism tend to wash their hands of it as soon as some procedure or potion fails to pan out. So I have carried what hope I have as a furtive prize.
This attitude was driven, too, by what I brought to the fight. I grew up in a house where there was a premium on being wised up to impending disapproval or disappointment, and there was punishment by contempt for any blatant display of innocence or hopeful desire. It was all too easy for me to feel shamed in the blast of medicine's certainty. If I carried hope from the start, I did it in secret, hiding it like an illegitimate child of a century past. I hid it even from myself.
It is in my personality, anyway, to linger on the dark side, sniffing under every rock, determined to know the worst that may happen. Not to be caught by surprise. I was raised in a family full of lies—a rich, entertaining, well-elaborated fivesome that flashed with competition and triangles and changing alliances. If your sister was becoming anorexic, no one mentioned it. When your father's ubiquitous assistant came along on family vacations year after year, and sat at picnics with him thigh-to-thigh, no one named the strangeness of it. That my parents divided me and my sisters up between themselves and schooled us in scorn for the other team: that was certainly never acknowledged. But it married me for life to the inconvenient argument, the longing to know what was real.
Hence, even when my prospects for recovery or remission have looked best, there has always been one face of my being that was turned toward the likelihood of death—keeping in touch with it, convinced that denying it any entry would weaken me in ways I couldn't afford. Forced into a corner, I'll choose truth over hope any day.
I worried, of course, that I was dooming myself. Americans are so steeped in the message that we are what we think, and that a positive attitude can banish disease. (You'd be amazed how many people need to believe that only losers die of cancer.) Was my realism going to shoot down any possibility of help? Superstitiously, I wondered.
But it turns out that hope is a more supple blessing than I had imagined. From the start, even as my brain was wrestling with death, my body enacted some innate hope that I have learned is simply a part of my being. Chemotherapy would knock me into a passive misery for days. And then—depending on which formula I was taking at the time—a day would come when I would wake up feeling energetic and happy and very much like a normal person. Whether the bad time I had just had lasted five days or five weeks, some inner voice eventually said—and still says—Never mind. Today is a ravishing day, and I will put on a short skirt and high heels and see how much of the future I can inhale.
Three weeks after my diagnosis, on the morning of my first chemotherapy, my liver specialist dictated notes that closed with this fragmentary, misspelled sentence: "It is to be hoped … , unlikel that we will get a second chance."
Two chemo cycles later, I had a CT scan that showed dramatic shrinkage in all my tumors—shrinkage by as much as half. Dr. Liver actually hugged me, and hinted that it was not impossible I might be a "complete responder." The first thing you learn when you get cancer is that the disease you've always thought of as 90 or 100 precise conditions is in fact hundreds of different diseases, which shade into each other all along the spectrum. And I turned out to have some mysterious fluke, a bit of biological filigree in the makeup of my tumors, that rendered them far better targets than I'd had any right to expect.
I went right out and bought four bottles of champagne and invited our eight dearest friends to the house for a party. It was a beautiful September night and we all ate pizza on the front porch. The kids were thrilled by the energy of it all, without quite understanding it. (After all, I still had cancer, didn't I? And they hadn't known how firmly I had felt sealed in my coffin before now.) It was as if a door far across a dark room had opened a small crack, admitting brilliant light from a hallway: it was still a long, long shot, I knew, but now at least I had something to drive toward. A possible opening, where before there had been none.
I became a professional patient. And all my doctors learned my name. —May 2004
Marjorie Williams was a Vanity Fair contributing editor and a writer for The Washington Post. She died of cancer in January 2006 at the age of 47.


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Contact: Kris Fister, (907) 683-9583
National Park Service Seeking Input on Plowing Denali Park Road Beyond Headquarters in Winter
DENALI PARK, Alaska: The National Park Service (NPS) intends to evaluate the impacts of plowing the Denali Park Road between park headquarters (Mile 3) and the Mountain Vista Rest Area (Mile 12) during the winter season.The NPS is interested in providing additional opportunities for winter visitors to the park, while protecting park resources and values. Plowing the road beyond park headquarters would allow private and commercial vehicles to travel further into the park to provide mountain viewing and increased recreational opportunities.
An informational meeting will be held on Wednesday, February 22, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the Murie Science and Learning Center in Denali National Park.Members of the public are invited to share their ideas and concerns about the proposal with park staff.
Currently the park road is closed to vehicular traffic beyond park headquarters after the first significant snowfall occurs (usually in October).During the winter one lane of the road is maintained so the road crew can manage the overflow ice that occurs between Mile 4-7.The other lane is not plowed. Both lanes are available for use by dog teams, cross country skiers, snowshoers, and other winter recreationalists. Spring road opening begins in mid-March, and the road is generally open to the public as far as the Savage River (Mile 15) by early April, and to the Teklanika River Rest Area (Mile 30) by mid to late April.
The NPS invites the public to submit written comments by Friday, March 9, 2012. Comments may be submitted online at https://parkplanning.nps.gov/dena, faxed to 907-683-9612, or mailed to:
Denali National Park and Preserve
ATTN:Winter Road Plowing
P.O. Box 9
Denali Park, AK99755
For additional information about the proposal please contact Paula Homan, Project Planning Lead, at 907-683-6223 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America's 397 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Learn more at www.nps.gov.
Last updated: April 14, 2015

subset: commoncrawl


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Replacement blades for 2-blade broadheads Each package contains: 3 Stainless Steel Instant-Cut Tips 6 Shock Absorbing O-Rings 6 Stainless Steel Blades
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Good Friday to you!! I have a couple of colleagues expecting babies very soon. One is due tomorrow and the other in a month. I made a sweet little card to give to one of them when the time comes. I love this little dress and shoes. It is SO cute!!! I love that when I cut around the sentiment it was shaped like a sideways heart. Perfect for all the love a mommy gives her baby, I think!
I'm linking this up to Unity Friends with Flair. You can see other projects here. Please check out my pumpkin card in the post below :)
Have a great a weekend!!
Friday, November 9, 2012
15 comments:
Love your card, so sweet, the colours work perfectly.ReplyDelete
Very cute card.ReplyDelete
Very sweet! The new Momma will love it!ReplyDelete
What a sweet card!ReplyDelete
Adorable! I love how you did the sentiment on a heart turned sideways!ReplyDelete
Sweet baby card !ReplyDelete
So sweet--I love the little dress and shoes :)ReplyDelete
One of my favorite KOM's! Very sweet!ReplyDelete
Your card is so adorable!ReplyDelete
so sweet! I love the pink frilly oval frame!ReplyDelete
What a super cute card, Michelle! I reckon she's expecting a wee little girl!ReplyDelete
So adorable!ReplyDelete
This is such a perfect baby card -- love it!ReplyDelete
Thanks so much for visiting my blog and commenting on my creations! Won't you consider following me? Have a great day! :)
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GRANDER® Pendant x Sabina Wong Design
Special Edition Pendant
This piece of jewellery, made of blown crystal glass vial, contains four different kinds of energies and three different waters, which have an important function as a carrier of information and protection against harmful influences in the environment. The precious water it contains vibrates at a high frequency, transmitting the forces of nature and having a harmonising effect on the body, soul and the mind.
This special collaboration is where exquisite designs of Austria and Hong Kong meet, making the beauty of the Earth's natural elements visible to the world. Delightfully pleasing to the eyes, a blessing for the body and soothing for the soul. This unique collection is one that simply transcends.
Snowflake Collection
The beauty of snowflakes, the symbol of purity. This Snowflake Collection adds a personal touch to nature's perfect gift. each made of mouth-blown duran glass, found in them a perfect symbol of life and the experience that comprise it as no two snowflakes are alike.
Colour: Rose Gold / 14K Gold / Sterling Silver
Chain length: 18″
Morning Star Collection
Shine as bright as the Morning Star with these specially designed necklaces.
Colour: 14K Gold / Sterling Silver
Chain length: 18″
Crystal Collection
Rose red, representation of love and elegance. Emerald, seeker of lover and revealer of truth.
Swarovski Crystals: Emerald Green /Rose Red
Chain: Rose Gold / 14K Gold / Sterling Silver
Chain length: 18″
- Water Revitalisation Devices
- Circulation Revitalisation Devices
- Cylinder Devices
- Consumer Items


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I want to inspire you, I want to uplift you, I want to comfort you, I want to protect you, I want to tease you, I want to kiss you, I want to hug you, I want to heal you, I want to hold you, I want to hear you, I want to tell you, I want to feel you, I want you :P
My expertise is to make you very happy every time you are in my room :*
I really enjoy the most being seduced by a nice gentleman ,able to make me dream ...I like it when you hold my hand in your hand and you start caressing my face while your lips are kissing mine :X
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We've tried to scare you straight, talked about studies, offered bad examples to learn from, given you a heads up on penalties, and reviewed a court case.
Needless to say, we've spent our fair share of time on distracted driving. The problem is: it may not be enough.
Several pieces of recent news show that the nation still has a long way to go when it comes to fighting one of the deadliest problems on today's roadways.
Study: Cell Phone Crash Deaths 'Vastly Underreported'
Anyone looking at reports or studies based on distraction-related crash reports might just be scratching the surface of the scope of the problem, according to a study conducted through a partnership between the National Safety Council (NSC) and Nationwide Insurance.
A recent analysis of 180 fatal crashes between 2009 and 2011 show that, although follow-up interviews with friends and family show "apparent cell phone use" linked to the crash, only about half were reported as cell phone-involved crashes to national networks like the Fatal Analysis Reporting System (FARS) that contains data used for studies.
Janet Froetscher, NSC's president and CEO, said that simple factors could encourage underreporting, like a driver not admitting use of a cell phone and errors in reports at the scene of a crash.
Other mishaps in reporting may be due to the simple nature of fatal crashes like "a driver reading an email or text message on a phone who dies in a crash without any witnesses," the NSC said.
What's more befuddling is how to figure out the number of fatal crashes linked to use of a cell phone that go unreported. But make no mistake, according to the report, actual numbers on cell phone-involved fatal crashes are likely more than they appear to be.
"There is strong evidence to support that under-reporting of driver cell phone use in crashes is resulting in a substantial underestimation of the magnitude of this public safety threat," the report stated.
The report also offered two anecdotal examples to support its case:
–Michigan driver and 17-year-old Kelsey Raffaele was killed in a crash in January 2010. According to her parents, Kelsey was talking on the phone with a friend who told them that her last words on the phone were "I'm going to crash." The crash report did not include cell phone use.
–Florida resident and 19-year-old Chelsey Murphy was killed in May 2010 when a car struck her. The driver, a teen, was talking on his cell phone; the person on the other end heard "the impact through the phone." The crash report did not include cell phone use.
Report: Few Tickets from Texting Bans
A USA Today study of state police agencies show that the statewide texting bans that exist in 39 states (with Florida likely the next to join them) have yielded a relatively meager amount of tickets.
In Tennessee, the average is about 24 citations per month. In Louisiana, the average is about 18 a month. Some state police agencies averaged fewer than one ticket a day, according to the study.
The study left out city and county police departments and agencies, but even some of the state police entities that were surveyed didn't have figures on texting-related tickets to provide, including the Arkansas State Police, which "does not have a means to track the number of violator citations for this particular charge," according to the report.
USA Today's analysis shows that, even though texting bans are now more common than not, enforcing them is still new area for police.
The California Office of Traffic Safety told Online Auto Insurance News that texting is one of the hardest things for a cop to spot, because it's "done below the dashboard, so the officer has to actually see them texting and doing it for a period of time."
More light might be shed on the issue, with the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety compiling a "major study" into the number of texting tickets are issued every year nationwide.
But until then, CEO Peter Kissinger told USA Today, "no one seems to really know" how often police are writing texting citations.
He called the lack of enforcement a "general perception."
Research Shows Parent Drivers Very Distracted, Even with Kids in the Car
Even though it's the young drivers that get a lot of the bad press when it comes to distracted driving, recent research from the University of Michigan shows how prominent the problem is for parents too.
And the problem is pretty bad.
Of the 600 parents surveyed for the study, nearly 90 percent said they engaged in at least one "technology-based distraction" behind the wheel with a preteen child in the car, with most saying that they engaged in at least four separate distractions.
The results show that issues with distracted driving go beyond teen drivers.
"Parents are frequently distracted while driving their 1- to 12-year-old children, and these distracted drivers were more likely to have been in a crash," Michelle Macy, the study's lead author, said in a statement.


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It wasn't easy. It wasn't pretty. But the Houston Cougars defeated the Temple Owls 22-13 Saturday afternoon to go 2-0 on the season. They overcame a 13-9 halftime deficit and scored a touchdown at the end of the game to put away the win. The positives were easy to see: the offense has discovered the importance of a good running game; the defense put together another good game; John O'Korn continued to dispel any notions that he shouldn't be the team's quarterback.
There were issues, though. Lots of issues. The offense reached the red zone eight times, getting only four field goals and one touchdown as a result. David Piland looked like the David Piland of last season. Penalties cost the team a touchdown and one defensive player was ejected for targeting.
But the team won. The Cougars will now go down in the record books as the victor of the first ever conference game of the American Athletic Conference. And after last season's 0-3 UH start, no win is too ugly.
The offense continued to churn up the yards on the field, this time gaining a total of 524 yards with 219 of those yards coming from the running game. Running back Ryan Jackson proved that last week was no fluke. He rushed 22 times for 109 yards and scored the team's lone touchdown. Kenneth Farrow rushed for 78 yards before suffering an injury in the first half - he was wearing a walking book as the game ended.
Freshman John O'Korn replaced the struggling David Piland at the start of the second period. O'Korn threw the ball 31 times, connecting on 23 of the attempts, for 233 yards. The offense was efficient under O'Korn, moving up and down the field seemingly with ease - until reaching the red zone. He really seemed to be clicking with the receivers, and he played with a poise that makes him seem more than just a freshman.
It was another strong game for a defensive unit which is looking much improved from last season's unit, and which seems to be really responding to new defensive coordinator David Gibbs. They gave up 13 first half points, but throttled Temple for the rest of the game. Temple amassed only 300 yards on offense and never really got into a rhythm in the second half. The defense forced three turnovers. The defense has surrendered just 26 points in these first two games, which is the fewest points allowed by a UH defense in the first two games to open a season since 1989.
Kicker/punter Richie Leone was the conference's special teams player of the week after the Southern game. He should be in line for that award again, seeing as how he was responsible for 16 of Houston's 22 points, going five for six in field goal attempts and making his lone PAT attempt. THE BAD
Head coach Tony Levine stated last week that he wasn't happy with the team's penalties in the game against Southern, primarily because the team lost lots of big gains on offense. He's probably not going to be happy this week either. The team committed eight penalties for 77 yards, which was an improvement over the Southern game. But a Ryan Jackson touchdown was called back due to a holding penalty, and linebacker Steve Taylor was lost for most of the game after being ejected over a targeting penalty.
Redshirt junior David Piland once again started the game at quarterback. Levine had said earlier last week that he would probably play both Piland and O'Korn. But he couldn't have been happy with the play of Piland. The offense looked tentative under Piland, and his passes often fell short of his receivers, or were behind them. He was only 6x17 for 72 yards, and he was replaced by O'Korn to start the second quarter. Levine said after the game that Piland suffered an unspecified injury during the game, but with O'Korn's play, it's hard to believe that a healthy Piland would have returned to the game.
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The Cougars accumulated 524 yards on offense. The running game did just about whatever it wanted, and the passing game looked really good once O'Korn settled in under center. But then the team reached the red zone, and then the offense suddenly became as incompetent as the Texans offense was during the David Carr era.
The Cougars won the game, but they had to depend on kicker Leone for points, and despite their apparent superiority on the field, they were never able to put the game away. The defense got a turnover deep in Temple territory late in the fourth quarter, and Ryan Jackson made sure to get the ball in the end zone, but until that moment, Temple was just one lucky play from winning the game.
The team's got a week off before facing Rice. The team's got a lot of good going for it, and it just appears to be working with a different vibe, different attitude than last year's Cougars. The problems with penalties and the red zone are fixable. It's fun watching the UH running game, and John O'Korn just looks like he was born to be a starting NCAA quarterback.


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Student Organisation Newsletter 8/2017
HYY Chairpersons' Seminar in Wilhelmsson Hall at 5pm on 13th Nov
HYY's & Unicafe's kitchenware sale Nov 14 at 8.30am-10.30am at Ylioppilasaukio Unicafe
Organisation Gala 2017
HYY's 149th Anniversary and birthday party are drawing near – get your dinner card or tickets for the birthday party now!
'How to organise sitsit that are safe for everyone' guide published
Students' Independence Day Procession on 6 December 2017 – sign up your organisation!
HYY Chairpersons' Seminar in Wilhelmsson Hall at 5pm on 13th Nov
HYY's Student Organisations Committee welcomes all chairpersons of faculty and subject organisations, student nations and recreational organisations operating within HYY to the Chairpersons' Seminar on the 13th of November!
The seminar will begin at 5 pm in Wilhelmsson Hall (5th floor of the New Student House) with a common session that will be followed by workshops. After the official program there will be an after party. A more detailed schedule will be published closer to the event. The New Student House is not fully accessible but the organisers will help out as much as possible if necessary. The event is held mostly in Finnish.
Please remember to sign up by 10 November through this link: https://goo.gl/forms/QUq1c5R62Tk6bdzN2
How has you term as chairperson been? Has it been the time of your life or the complete opposite? What do you need to remember to end your term on a high note and what can you take away from this experience?
Come and meet others in the same situation and spend a great evening together!
Representatives of the Student Union will also talk inform about current affairs concerning organisations and the event offers an excellent opportunity to discuss with and give feedback to HYY.
In addition to the chairperson, another representative from your organisation is welcome to join the event.
There will be a specific program for people who have been elected or who are interested in running for chairperson for next year! The program starts with the common opening session at 5 pm in Wilhelmsson Hall. Afterwards the program continues with a chairpersons' panel where current and former chairpersons share and can be asked about their experiences as chairperson. After the panel participants will get to share and discuss what their hopes and fears for the potential upcoming year as chairperson are with others.
There is no limit to how many can participate from one organisation, however the overall maximum of participants in the program for new and potential chairpersons is 60 due to the capacity of Wilhelmsson Hall.
For further information, please contact:
Jane Kärnä
Chair of the Student Organisations Committee
email@example.com / 0405896369
HYY's & Unicafe's kitchenware sale Nov 14 at 8.30am-10.30am at Ylioppilasaukio Unicafe
Big dinner calls for big wares!
Does your organisation's kitchen need more dishes? HYY and Unicafe will arrange a kitchenware sale at Ylioppilasaukio Unicafe on Tuesday 14th November. Cooking vessels, serving dishes and other kitchen utensils of catering kitchen level are on sale for a very low price.
Organisation Gala 2017
Organisation active, thank you for the important work you've done!
This year we would like to thank you in person by inviting you to the very first Organisation Gala! The event will feature the reveal of this year's organisation contests' winners as well as HYY's first Organisation Heroes. Come spend a chill evening with other organisation actives. And the best part is, the Student Organisations Committee will take care of organising the event so all you have to do is be there and enjoy the night!
All organisation actives are welcome to join the event, even if your organisation didn't participate in the organisation contests or didn't report organisation heroes. However if you are interested in still doing so there are a few days left! Sign up for the contests:
The event is a cocktail kind of party. The doors open at 7 pm and the program starts at 7:30 pm at HYY's Central Office (Mannerheimintie 5 A, 2nd floor). The event space is not accessible by wheelchair so if you require assistance, please contact the organisers.
Please RSVP via this link: https://goo.gl/forms/C3mLnOLNwKZ732Si2, so we can reserve the right amount of food & refreshments.
More information:
Marika Tuominen
Vice Chair
Student Organisations Committee
HYY's 149th Anniversary and birthday party are drawing near – get your dinner card or tickets for the birthday party now!
The Anniversary is held on the impressive premises of the Crowne Plaza hotel on Thursday 23 November 2017. The Anniversary begins with a cocktail event at 4.30 pm, and the Anniversary dinner is served at 5.45 pm. The stunning dinner party culminates in an academic Anniversary Ball.
After the dinner party and the Anniversary Ball, an atmospheric birthday party that is open to everyone begins. Starting at 10.30 pm, you can look forward to superb music, an epic programme and, first and foremost, a spectacular party you simply cannot miss. Ticket sales for the birthday party is open now! HYY offers 8-ticket packages aimed especially at organisations for a price of €48.
You can purchase your dinner card for the Anniversary here: https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/HYY149
Registration ends on 12 November or when the places have been filled. The registration is binding. A ticket for the birthday party is included in the price of the dinner card.
You can purchase tickets for the birthday party here: https://bailataan.fi/events/13d070e8-8b44-493b-bf7b-49c5f9eefe6f
Advance tickets to the birthday party (1–19 November) €8/ticket or €48 for an 8-ticket package.
On the week of the event and from the door (20–23 November) €9/ticket.
The ticket price includes the cloakroom service fee (€3) and a gorgeous overall badge.
Further information on the Anniversary and the birthday party: https://hyy.helsinki.fi/en/students/culture-events/hyy-149th-anniversary
'How to organise sitsit that are safe for everyone' guide published
We have compiled a guide featuring measures that help you organise sitsit that are safe for everyone and in which everyone is able to participate. The best parties are the ones that everyone is able to enjoy!
The guide: https://hyy.helsinki.fi/sites/default/files/how_to_organise_sitsit_that_...
Students' Independence Day Procession on 6 December 2017 – sign up your organisation!
Students of the Capital Region celebrate the independence of hundred-year-old Finland in the Students' Independence Day Procession on 6 December. The event is organised by the student unions of the Capital Region: HYY, AYY, ArtSU, SHS, Kadettitoverikunta, Metka and Helga. Besides the traditional torches, thousands of blue and white lights will illuminate the Independence Day Procession and the public celebration at the Senate Square.
We ask organisations operating under HYY to inform us whether your flag participates in placing the wreaths at Sankariristi (organisation at 3.30 pm) and the procession. Please sign up by Sunday 3 December at https://www.lyyti.in/Juhlakulkue2017.
The event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/124333588235604/


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santander.com.br was registered 2 decades 2 years ago. It has a alexa rank of #3,872 in the world. It is a domain having .com.br extension. This site has a Google PageRank of 7/10. It is estimated worth of $ 2,280,960.00 and have a daily income of around $ 2,112.00. As no active threats were reported recently, santander.com.br is SAFE to browse.
|Daily Unique Visitors:
|Daily Pageviews:
|Income Per Day:
|$ 2,112.00
|Estimated Worth:
|$ 2,280,960.00
|Google Indexed Pages:
|Yahoo Indexed Pages:
|Bing Indexed Pages:
|Google Backlinks:
|Not Applicable
|Bing Backlinks:
|Alexa BackLinks:
|Google Safe Browsing:
|No Risk Issues
|Siteadvisor Rating:
|No Risk Issues
|WOT Trustworthiness:
|Very Poor
|WOT Privacy:
|Very Poor
|WOT Child Safety:
|Very Poor
|Facebook Shares:
|Facebook Likes:
|Not Applicable
|Facebook Comments:
|Not Applicable
|Twitter Count (Tweets):
|Linkedin Shares:
|Not Applicable
|Delicious Shares:
|Not Applicable
|Not Applicable
|H1 Headings:
|Not Applicable
|H2 Headings:
|Not Applicable
|H3 Headings:
|Not Applicable
|H4 Headings:
|Not Applicable
|H5 Headings:
|Not Applicable
|H6 Headings:
|Not Applicable
|Total IFRAMEs:
|Not Applicable
|Total Images:
|Not Applicable
|Google Adsense:
|Not Applicable
|Google Analytics:
|Not Applicable
|Domain Registrar:
|Registration Date:
|1996-12-23 2 decades 2 years 4 months ago
|Last Modified:
|2012-02-14 7 years 2 months 3 weeks ago
|Expiration Date:
|2014-12-23 4 years 4 months 2 weeks ago
Permainan baru setiap hari! Permainan aksi, permainan petualangan, permainan teka-teki, permainan balapan, permainan anak-anak, permainan olahraga, permainan multi pemain dan...
Bluntly offensive statements and careless advice with animal icons.
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FXOpen forex broker - Unique combination of Retail Micro, Mini, Standard Forex Trading and True ECN marketplace trading with Level 2 quotes on MetaTrader 4.


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Not content with bringing you the best clothing and accessories edit from stalls at Portobello, Spitalfields, Camden and Brick Lane markets, pretaportobello has expanded its roll call to include exclusive Australian designers too.
From today, you will be able to buy pieces from up-and-coming designers based at Sydney's Paddington, Fringe and Bondi Beach markets. The items - hand-picked by the pretaportobello team - are otherwise unavailable in the UK.
Mok Theorem, Gingham and Heels, Cherry and Clover Love (tie dye dress pictured, £35) are just some of the stocked labels hoping to be the next Sass & Bide.
Next stop, the markets of New York and Europe. Watch this plot.


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Here are a listing of the pearls of wisdom that my Dad has imparted to us kids over the years. I will add to this as I remember them.
– "You can do anything you think you can do." Dad always used this one when we were apprehensive about doing something, or thought we couldn't do it. I always thought he sounded like a broken record because he said it all the fucking time. Know what? I eventually started believing it, and so did my sister. You can do anything you think you can do. I tell my kids the same thing to this day. Thanks for that pearl Dad!
– "Everything happens for a reason. You may not like it. You may not understand it. You may not be able to change it, but it does happen for a reason. One of these days you'll understand it." Well, this is one of the Dad-isms I always thought was bullshit when I was a kid. It didn't make any sense to me, and I thought it was a way to pacify me. Turns out my Dad is a hell of alot smarter than I thought he was, cause he was dead on with this one.
– "Someone being mean to you does not excuse you for being mean to them." He hasn't had to use this one in a long time. On most levels I agree with this Dad-ism. You should take the higher ground when possible. However, there are people in this world that need the absolute, ever loving shit beat out of them.
– "One of these days you will want to sit down and visit with your sister but you won't be able to. She will be on one side of the country and you will be on the other side. You should learn to be nicer to each other." Well, as I stated earlier in my post about Gina, this is a no bullshit Dad-ism. We did fix our relationship, and we did become friends, and we did wind up on opposite ends of the country. Well shit! Thanks Dad, ya butthole.
– "As long as it makes a turd, that's all that counts." This is a Dad-ism that references food. Now, to be perfectly honest, I can't say I ever recall my Dad saying this, but it sounds like something he would say and I have been telling everyone for years that he said it. So, he said it. 😀
–"You are only as old as you think you are." Dad has said this for years. I never really appreciated what it meant until I got older. Basically, if you think you are old, you will act old. If you think you are young, you will act like Mark. LOL!!!!
–"Be good, and if you can't, be good at it." I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. I am pretty sure he only used this one on me, and only after I was an adult.
–"It is the fucking you're getting for the fucking you got." This one is in reference to divorce, child support and the general amount of ass pain experienced when dealing with an ex. I think the main message in this Dad-ism was "you are screwed, so buck up and take it like a man cause you can't change it."
–"Be careful of the little person you shit on today, for tomorrow he may be your boss." I don't think this one needs any explaining. An axiom I live by religiously.
3 Responses to "Dad-isms"
Funny shit. And wise too.
Have to throw this on in here bubba. It may not be a dad-ism, but Papaw and James count close enough.
Dance all ya like, eventually the fiddle player will get paid. Referring to the fact that that as men we face the repercussions of our actions. Good or bad.
Right On Adam, I thought the world an all of both of them, if they said something you may not agree with, but you better listen because somewhere down the road it's gonna apply, I loved them both ————————- Love,, Dad


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CONTACT Cape-Atlantic Make the Calls That Care
Congratulations to all the CONTACT Cape-Atlantic volunteers who helped make 2011 their most caring year yet! CONTACT Cape-Atlantic is a United Way agency providing telephone reassurance and community support...to the elderly and disabled in Atlantic and Cape May Counties.
In 2011, almost 82,000 calls were handled, up from 74,000 calls in 2010.
Over 150 volunteers make calls of a weekly basis and help their South Jersey neighbors continue their independent living, while still feeling connected.
Find out more about helping CONTACT Cape-Atlantic.


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Beth's Design Space
Simplicity in Web Design
Beth's Design Space
was originally founded in Seward, Alaska as
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The Ulysse Nardin Maxi Matine Diver Chronograph replica watches has a sporty sort of appeal while remaining very fashionable and classy. The lack dial is featuring with a central seconds hand and small seconds at 9 o'clock. A 30 minutes register at 3 o'clock, and a date window at 6 o'clock. This is an impressive Ulysse Nardin replica watch.
As a diver watch, the Ulysse Nardin Maxi Matine Diver replica Chronograph watches is water resistant to 200m. The watch is made of stainless with pushers and a crown decorated with black titanium. Finally, the case back is transparent and the strap is made of black rubber with a deployment clasp. So, you can watch the well finished movement through the case back. With a 42.7mm stainless steel case, this Ulysse Nardin Maxi Matine Diver Chronograph replica watch is totally a dress watch.


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Private status pages allow you to hide your status page from the public and only communicate with internal teams during downtime.
Unlike public pages, private pages are subject to a 30 day trial. From the day you create your account, you will have 30 days to activate your page. If you do not activate your page within those 30 days, the page will become inaccessible to anyone.
If after 30 days passes you still haven't activated your page but are still interested in using the product, email us at email@example.com and we can extend your trial.
The primary method for making status pages private are via SAML-based SSO and Google Auth. By using either or these solutions, you can require users to authenticate before viewing the page.
You can configure your privacy option by clicking the dropdown in the top right, going to the Manage Account page, and then clicking the Page Audience tab.
Our system works with all of the major IdPs (e.g. Okta, OneLogin, PingOne or Bitium) and any solution that speaks SAML2.0.
When someone tries to access the status page, they will be routed through the Identity Provider's authentication flow. Assuming the user correctly authenticates, they will be redirected to the status page.
See this article for more information on how to connect with your Identity Provider.
The other major Page Audience option is Google Auth.
When someone tries to access the status page, they will be redirected to the standard Google authentication page. Assuming the user correctly authenticates, they will be redirected to the status page.
On a growth private page or higher, you can restrict access to your status page to a certain (or certain range) of IP addresses.


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One teaspoon devil inside blazer every girl needs a sequinned jacket in their wardrobe! This is the perfect piece to dress up your favourite jeans for nighttime. Don't be afraid to wear this guy during the day too! Cut in a blazer shape with prominent shoulders and a plain black back.