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Ordinary Heroes: Boston Cancer Support
April 12, 2017
BOSTON – Imagine that you’re sitting in your doctor’s office. You’re not sure what exactly what’s happening but you do know something is very wrong. Maybe you’re constantly weak or exhausted, maybe you’re in severe pain, or maybe you’re covered in bruises that you don’t remember getting. And then, your doctor comes in and he’s […]
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Notes from the Road: Chemo Mix
March 9, 2017
Fight Songs I was, again, going through the journal that I kept while being treated for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and I found notes I had made on what songs I wanted to put on a Chemo Mix. These were songs to keep me in an “fight-like-hell” frame of mind while I endured drugs, radiation, and […]
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Notes from the Road: Leukemia Journal
March 5, 2017
The Journal While undergoing treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), I kept a “leukemia journal” for a few months. I wish I had been more diligent and detailed about writing in it, but at the time, it wasn’t just ALL I was dealing with. About two weeks after my diagnosis, my younger son would die […]
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Notes From the Road: Getting Sick After Nearly Dying
February 16, 2017
“Roads We’ve Traveled” won’t always be long feature stories. Starting today, we have the first of series of shorter blog posts based on what’s current – the news, seasonal events, or relevant book or music releases, and so on. The new series will be called “Notes from the Road” and today’s post is about being […]
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Back to School, Part 2: Jeanne’s Story
February 2, 2017
CHELMSFORD, MA — Jeanne Marie Engels, the mother of a lifelong friend, sits in a Starbuck’s in Chelmsford, Massachusetts and explains how, many years ago, she found herself thinking about going back to school. At the age of 37, her marriage had ended. She and her four children left Germany where they had lived on […]
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Back to School: Part One
January 23, 2017
LEBANON, NH – When I called David Bouthillier, my best friend from St. Michael’s College, and pitched him the interview idea, he seemed surprised. Maybe even a little amused. “I just did what I had to do at the time to raise the family and try to get by,” David said to me as we […]
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Fighting My Way Back
January 19, 2017
“I’m tough, rough, ready and able To pick myself up from under this table Don’t stick no sign on me, I got no label I’m a little sick, unsure, unsound and unstable But I’m fighting my way back” —Thin Lizzy The Chelmsford Sports Club (now closed) was located in an old industrial building off the […]
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Society and Trauma: Or Why I’m Doing This
January 17, 2017
One weekend…. In October of 1995, while working at a small New Hampshire daily paper, I was given my first “weekend duty.” This meant that anything that happened between Friday and Sunday night, for all of the Lakes Region, was mine to cover. I was given a pager (it was 1995, after all), a police […]
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Obstacles on the Course and in Life Part Two: Beating the Beast
January 12, 2017
The Trifecta The Spartan “Trifecta” is a goal of many OCR racers. The Trifecta means completing three races whose names just seem to get more and more menacing: “The Sprint,” “The Super,” and “The Beast.” According to the official Spartan web page, http://www.spartan.com, the Sprint is three-plus miles with 20 or more obstacles. Eric and […]
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