I was featured in a local paper here in my area. The article is about this blog and some of the advocacy work I do.

I never want to be a woman who hides her age. Every year I am older is another year I am alive. I am living with this disease.

I don't know why he popped up in my mind this week, but he did. I checked out his Facebook page and noticed all the recent posts were of friends posting well-wishes on his page. He wasn't writing anything. Photos appeared of him with friends... except instead of him playing disc golf, he was in a wheelchair.

(We also got sandwiches together along with a number of other brain tumor patients, got lost in the city, made jokes about a whole bunch of people with brain cancer getting lost in the city, and, well... you had to have been there.)

Liz Salmi, a patient advocate, talks about her decision to be open and share what it is like to live and blog about living with brain cancer in 2013.

#BTSM is a patient-run, Twitter community and is not owned by any organization, nonprofit or otherwise. We are for patients and care partners, by patients and care partners. Use the #BTSM hashtag anytime, and join us for a live Twitter chat on the first Sunday of each month.

This week I joined with hundreds of my fellow brain tumor advocates from around the country in Washington, DC, to attend the annual “Head to the Hill” lobby day organized by the National Brain Tumor Society. This is the second year in a row I've traveled to our nation’s capital to educate our members of Congress on critical issues currently facing the brain tumor community.

I realized I never wanted to go to a general cancer support group again. On the way out I asked the social worker if there were any brain cancer groups. She handed me a list of with about 200 groups around the greater Sacramento region. Just one group focused on brain tumors. I needed to head to the Internet to find all of you.

My primary care doctor sent me to see a new physical therapist for a back muscle injury. The therapist looked at my medical chart. Then he looked up at me. Then back to my medical chart. Then to me.