What's Up

Interrupting my coverage of Comic-Con International (which I may have exhausted anyway) to mention a couple of things I'm doing....

I had a nice time yesterday being interviewed for German television. Regular readers may recall that there's a German edition of Mom's Cancer--the only non-English version so far, though I think we're working on others. I met Dennis Wagner from the weekly magazine program "Kulturreport" broadcast on ARD, which Dennis described as the biggest public TV station in Germany. I'll take his word for that. I enjoyed spending some time with Dennis, his girlfriend, and the three adorable German-singing children they're schlepping down the West Coast in a minivan as Dennis pursues a working vacation. I met Dennis in San Francisco at a beautiful spot I suggested overlooking the Golden Gate (near the Palace of Legion of Honor, if you know the area). Dennis really wanted the Golden Gate Bridge in the shot. Unfortunately, the Golden Gate Bridge really wanted to be completely obscured by fog yesterday morning. We made do.

Later today I'm flying to Tucson, Arizona to talk to a meeting of four hospice groups, including nurses, physicians, administrators, social workers and chaplains, about 50 people in all. This speaking engagement was arranged by Dr. Scott Bolhack, CEO of the Tucson Long-Term Care Medical Group and the TLC Palliative Medicine Team, who read my book quite a while ago, saw some value in it, contacted me, and worked with my publisher to fly me down there and put me up for a couple of nights.

I'm very excited about this opportunity. Next to people who've been through a similar crisis themselves, no one's opinion means more to me than that of healthcare professionals who think that Mom's Cancer has something to offer them or their patients. When Mom's Cancer was still online as a webcomic, one of the earliest e-mails I got was from a nursing instructor in Australia who asked permission to print some pages and give them to her students working with cancer patients to help them understand the family dynamics they'd find in the field. That blew me away; I consider it one of my coolest lifetime accomplishments. I've gotten that kind of response from other medical professionals a few times since and it's always a thrill.

I love Comic-Con and similar events but, as I wrote last Sunday, I don't think the wonderful folks who attend them are necessarily my book's first, best audience. The people I'll meet in Arizona tomorrow are the ones who deal with the issues I raised in my book every day and will know whether I got it right or not. I'll try my best to do a good job for them.