A big re-birthday is around the corner. Kineahora.

I just completed a post for Health Union about the magical thinking, or superstition, that keeps me from saying that on Jan. 31, I will celebrate 10 years since my fourth bone marrow transplant.

Chances are good that I'll make it, but you never know, and I don't want to jinx myself.

It's all about the wording.

In the post, I explained that it might be OK to say it if I added the Yiddish phrase kineahora – “no evil eye” – to protect myself. (It’s pronounced KINE-AHORA.) It's even better if you spit three times, or in the interest of sanitation, make a spitting sound. It could be toi, toi, toi; pu pu pu; poo, poo, poo; or other variations.

So:

“I’m looking forward to an important cancer anniversary, kineahora poo poo poo.”

It also works well if you're complimenting a tennis partner.

"You had a good shot, kineahora."

The author of a post on the site The Word Mavens writes, "Jews are not the only ethnic/religious group to believe, at least a little bit, in superstitions. But maybe we put a greater stock in our superstitions because we’ve had such a tough time of it these past 5,000 years.

"If you slip up and brag – or if someone compliments you, what can you do? You can invoke the Yiddish phrase kineahora – 'don’t give me the evil eye.' As in 'I’ve felt good all summer, kineahora.' Or 'You look nice today, Sylvia. Is that a new dress?' 'Kineahora. I just got it. Do you like it?'

"The derivation of the phrase is from the German kein, meaning no, and the Hebrew ayin ha-rah, the evil eye. The kein and ayin are blended into one word: kein or kayn – keinahora."

I learned that you can go to the Evil Eye Store for protection. I saw some nice things, but I didn't buy them.

Murano evil eye pendant protection charm and multi-evil eye pendant

On another topic, in a previous post, I wrote about the solidarity and sorrow that comes from belonging to a community with people who have, or have had, similar illnesses. I had to break it into two parts because there is so much to say. The solidarity comes from meeting people who know what you're going through. The sadness is well known to readers of this blog. It's about losing friends like Patricia, Anne, Dori and Vytas.

The kineahora post took a ridiculously long time to write, while the solidarity and sorrow one was pretty free-flowing. Maybe it's because I needed to do some research for the former. Looking things up on the internet is easier than going to the City Library, which I did in the old days at the former Union-News, when doing research on microfiche would make me dizzy. Yet there is so much information on the internet that you can end up with information overload – also dizzying – and it can take twice as long.

Also there was something about the topic. The weightiness of it. At the paper we used to revel in writing the stories that came out with the ease of a hot knife cutting through butter. This was not that kind of story.

On yet another topic, here is a link to a podcast in which I share some of my story.

On National Cancer Survivor's day, thinking of lives saved, friends lost

I didn't know it was National Cancer Survivor's Day until Barbara Shaw Sadowsky – a marathon survivor at 39 years – posted it on Facebook.

It's funny because I had just gone up to Spofford, N.H., yesterday to take a walk in the woods with a cousin (and Maddie) and the topic came up, as it often does, about my own marathon fight against leukemia. It was in reference to the changes in my hair that I wrote about in my MarieClaire.com essay. I told her I thought I looked funny in the French poodle hairdo. She said I had looked great and very alive.

When we were going over the timeline and I got to the point where I said my doctors said a certain great thing about me at the five-year-mark, I had to spell the word instead of saying it, C-U-R-E-D.

She said I sounded just like my mother when she spelled words out instead of saying them, just like me, out of fear of being jinxed.

There are so many times when I have felt like I needed to tread lightly. For example, when I twice hit the two-year-mark when my doctor said I could break out the Champagne, I marked the occasion quietly, having coffee with friends, so as not to send out a signal that I had too much hubris and deserved to be struck down.

At five years, my children took me out to dinner with a number five candle and a chorus of Happy Birthday, but we still didn't say the word. I can say, "They say I'm cured," but I can't say it myself.

My social worker said patients have all sorts of superstitions. One woman had had a good blood test when wearing the same pair of earrings and didn't want to risk changing them the next time.

This way of magical thinking actually sends feel-good signals to the brain, but if taken to extremes can turn problematical. I don't go crazy over it. I just won't say THAT word.

The road is filled with joy, but once you have entered what some called Cancerland it also contains landmines. People who you wouldn't have met if not for cancer die. Your eye catches the cause of death of a person just about your age and it is from "your" disease and it reawakens the shock of fear that you had when diagnosed It doesn't make sense, but there it is.

But let's dwell on the positive.

All the Dana-Farber doctors, nurses and staff, the friends and family who form our "caring circle," the advances in medicine which make it possible for some of us to survive when in the not-to-distant past we would not have,  the helping organizations such as Cancer Connection and individuals such as Dr. Jay Burton, also an AML survivor and the founder of Survivor Journeys, which addressed the lack of support groups locally for survivors of blood cancers, and, of course, the donors and Be The Match, without which we blood cancer survivors would not even spelling out THAT word.