Bring dinner, and help a patient out

It's tough to be dealing with cancer and even tougher if you are a woman – and it is holiday season.

If you are mobile, you will overdo it. So, don't! Is it really worth expending your limited energy, even though you know no one does it better than you?  Get your Carly Simon CD, and keep replaying "Nobody Does It Better."

This will soothe you, and now your mind will be on love and not cooking.  Let go of the control freak within you. Your family can do everything; allow yourself to feel like a queen, and let people serve you.

To those men out there who are taking care of women with cancer (who pretty much can't get out of bed), I have one thing to say to you: Make food and feed your patient.  Guys have a tendency to watch TV and forget that you are alone in the bedroom, starving.

My husband has been great with massages, foot rubs and hugs when I'm crying. But he is not good about food. One day when I was sick in bed, having been alone all day, he came in from work, hopped in bed with me, turned on the TV and asked, "What do you think we should do for dinner?"

Are you kidding me?  Men, it's your job to walk in the door with dinner.

When my husband is out of town, my girlfriends are wonderful. They bring dinner and check on me – an open-door policy. They know instinctively that eating and hydration are the most important things I need.

So, please, if you can't make dinner, pick up dinner. That is what we want for Christmas!