Recent research indicates that obesity makes ovarian cancer deadlier and more likely to recur. According to physician and senior author of the study, Dr. Andrew J. Li of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, maintaining ideal body weight is important for many reasons. This is just one more reason to reduce obesity -- because obese women suffering from advanced ovarian cancer are more likely to die than women at healthy weights. They also suffer recurrences more quickly. On average, women in the study considered overweight or obese saw an average of 16 months before recurrence while those considered underweight or at a healthy weight saw 25 months.

Perhaps it's the secretion of adipose tissue that makes tumors less sensitive to chemotherapy. Li said there are ideas on the table -- and his team are looking into them. One fact they feel certain about is that obesity does not increase the chances of contracting ovarian cancer. It just shows the odds of survival are diminished once the disease has been contracted.

When I first started going to counseling, I was told I would need eight to 10 sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy to help me deal with my anxiety, my panic, my fear of breast cancer recurrence. My first session was in May 2005 -- and I am still going. Those initial sessions are possibly all I really needed -- and perhaps I could have stopped the therapy long ago. But stopping never came up and no one told me I had to call it quits so I kept on marching into territory I had never before traveled. I have a degree in counseling -- but I'd never been counseled. I know how to listen to others and share empathy and ask open-ended questions -- but I'd never been the one talking and sharing and venting and crying and answering questions. Until last May -- when I discovered the appeal and the comfort of the counseling chair.

I marched into one of my sessions yesterday and plopped into a brown faux leather recliner. I talked about my recent graduation from Herceptin therapy and about how I might manage in life now that treatment is over. I talked about my jobs -- as a writer and a preschool teacher -- and how they fit into my world. I talked about the level of stress in my days and about how my once constant fear that cancer was trailing me has largely diminished. I talked about how breast cancer is no longer my constant companion -- about how it is now just an acquaintance. And I talked about how counseling was once so necessary and about how it is now just a luxury that helps me maintain peace as I live forward.

I am not sure when I will stop going to counseling. But I'm not completely sure of much anymore. And I've learned from counseling to not really question the future -- to just live in the moment and to give thought primarily to the here and now. And right here, right now, I'm sticking with my sessions, my one hour every month, my comforting counseling chair.

For the almost two years I have been receiving treatment for breast cancer, I have traveled the same path -- over and over and over again -- from my house to the hospital and back again. And while I have seen different doctors and received different treatments and visited various departments and locations for all sorts of surgeries and tests and scans and X-rays, the path has remained the same. And after all the time that has passed, the power of the path has never diminished -- despite how familiar it has become.

Today I drove from my house to the hospital for a counseling appointment. I drove the same stretch of highway for a few miles, got off on my usual exit, drove for a few more miles past all the typical shopping centers and restaurants, and came to the light where I always turn left into the Cancer Center. I drove into the parking lot, found a parking space -- thankfully -- and displayed my yellow patient parking permit that allows to park without fear of a $20 ticket. I got out of my car and began my walk to the main hospital where the psychology clinic is located. I passed -- as usual -- the startling crowds of people smoking outside the Cancer Center, the groups of medical students who gather outside the medical facilities, the masses of people in white coats racing around and checking beepers and talking on cell phones. I entered the hospital, traveled to the ground floor, and turned a few corners until I reached my clinic. I checked in, paid my $25 co-pay, and waited for a just a few minutes until I was greeted by my counselor. We walked to a private room, talked for an hour, and then I followed my path in reverse.

The path is always the same. It is routine and predictable and rarely varies. But it has never become dull and I have never become numb to it -- because the power that is wrapped up in my drive and my subsequent steps that take me to and from my destinations still has a tight hold on me. I can travel the same path for other purposes -- to shop or have dinner -- and the power is lost. But when I travel for reasons all about cancer, the power overwhelms me. It happened today -- as I drove listening to the same CD I always play on these missions, as tears filled my eyes. I was not sad -- just overflowing with emotion. Emotion about all that I've encountered -- the encounters with fear and dread and total repulsion and the encounters with hope and joy and pure contentment. Today I felt powerful. Simply powerful. Because I have overcome what has faced me so far and because I am still traveling the same road, the same path to ensure my future health and well-being -- which is something I hope to become all too familiar with.