Catherine Gigante-Brown

Wrinkles or lifelines? Chunky or curvaceous? The choice is yours.

I’m boycotting you until you start recognizing breast cancer survivors like me by carrying mastectomy bras.

As a breast cancer survivor, the worst day of the year is when I go for my mammogram. True, nobody actually likes mammos, but I’ve been bitten by one. On the way to my annual squishing, I realized that I have a bunch of coping strategies.

The hell with his elaborate metaphors and rhetorical phrases. Iambic pentameter is cruel and unusual punishment.

8. Educate, don’t fixate.

Being a little bit chubby is better than being a lot dead.

You realize pretty soon that everything other than cancer — i.e. missing a train, being late to your dentist appointment — is no biggie compared to the suck factor of chemo.

I try. I really do. But whenever I attempt to embrace my husband Peter’s Cuban culture, I always screw up.

Candida Royalle pretty much invented couples erotica. She made it socially-acceptable. Respectable. The women in her films looked like real women and had real, comfortable female bodies. And her movies actually had stories. Good stories. She hired her friends—adult legends like Annie Sprinkle, Veronicas Hart and Vera, and Gloria Leonard — to create Femme films too.

Upset you lost your keys? Try losing your breast. Pissed off about missing that train? Try missing your son’s 8th grade graduation because of a horrific infection from fluid buildup in the previously-mentioned missing breast. See what I mean? It kind of puts life into perspective.