I was inspired to adopt the no-shoes-in-the-house policy after attending an event last week in honor of Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. At a discussion hosted by L’Oreal’s Color of Hope initiative, nutritional counselor Oz Garcia was one of the featured speakers. During the Q&A afterward, someone in the audience asked Garcia about BPA toxins in plastic, which led to a larger discussion about toxins in general.

It was pretty disturbing. You know, the kind of conversation that exposes information you’d always suspected but decided to ignore anyway, like all those chemicals in the air that we breathe. Well, according to Garcia, who cited a report by President Obama’s Cancer Panel, there are about 80,000 or so, and many of them are known carcinogens. And get this, apparently some other really official and important study, also referenced by Garcia, tested tissue samples from umbilical cords and found that babies are born with more than 200 toxins in their systems.

Way to give our kids a head start. Imagine how many toxins you’d find in the body of the average American adult.

After Garcia dropped the aforementioned gems on us, someone asked him what we should be doing to curb the amount of poisons in our bodies and our environments.

“You can start by taking off your shoes when you come in the house,” he responded. He didn’t have time to elaborate, but I didn’t need him to. I walk around the streets of New York City every day.

In a place that’s home to some 8 million people, filth, grime, dirt, bacteria such as coliform from human and animal waste, and general nastiness abound — and collect on the bottom of your shoes. I hadn’t really thought about it until last week’s event, and now I’m wondering how it is that I never really thought about it until last week’s event.

I wash my hands all the time. I also wipe down the light switches and doorknobs in my apartment and regularly change the sponges in my kitchen. I keep my toothbrush in my medicine cabinet to prevent any extra bathroom germs from taking residence on an instrument that I put in my mouth, and sanitizer and hand wipes have their own special spot in my new designer bag.

But what does it all matter if I’m contaminating my home with the muck and the mire stuck to the bottom of my soles?

Now, it grosses me out to think of what I may be bringing home, something many before me must’ve considered before banning footwear in their houses, too — people like my sometimes employer, domestic goddess Martha Stewart (not to mention the millions of folks who live in parts of East Asia). I’m a little late to the game, I know. But now I get it.

And I’m going to make Martha proud. Near my front door, I plan to set up a boot tray for shoes. And next to it will be a pretty swing-handle basket filled with fresh slippers for all my guests.

Fighter, warrior, survivor ― all inadequate, says author Dana Jennings. Cancer just is, and that’s pretty much all there is to it.

Point taken.

Actually, the piece makes a lot of sense. Some people just end up with life-threatening illnesses, serious ailments, bunions, etc., and others don’t. According to Jennings, life happens, you roll with the punches, and you don’t get to bestow special titles on yourself just because you’re diagnosed with cancer.

It’s a fresh perspective, I’ll say that much. After a lifetime of thinking of cancer patients as the ultimate troupers, Jennings’ take is a bit disarming. And although his column is definitely worth reading, I found myself disagreeing almost from the start.

Jennings isn't really feeling any of the above

Words, while often unable to completely define who we are, are indeed powerful, especially when it comes to self-identity. Referring to yourself as black, a woman, an American not only affects how you see the world but also how you see yourself.

And as a journalist, words are doubly important to me. When strung together, they can become a best seller, spark a protest, or make someone laugh. Even on their own, they can command attention. Consider, for example, the always offensive nigger, fag, or bitch. Or on the other end of the spectrum, the beauty of words like luscious, passionate, or luxurious.

Even the most banal words can become something more when we assign new or expanded meaning to them, and this is what happens with cancer. For many of us with the disease, the term survivor is more than just a catchphrase; it’s a call to action, a way to establish some sense of power in a situation where losing control mentally can happen very quickly.  For Jennings, however, it’s simply another one of cancer’s clichés:

“I sometimes think of cancer as a long and difficult journey, a quest out of Tolkien, or a dark waltz — but never a battle,” he writes. “How can it be a battle when we patients are the actual battleground?”

Maybe I’m missing the point here, but I would absolutely describe my experience with cancer as a battle. And, yes, my body is the front line, ground zero if you will, but my brain is constantly churning out orders for it to follow. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t warn myself not to get pulled in too deeply by cancer’s undertow. I remind myself pretty regularly that I can triumph over this disease, that I can fight the beast and live to tell about it.

What Jennings fails to acknowledge is that there is a reason why talking about life-altering illnesses evokes images of confrontation and struggle. Cancer strips us bare, and always the main goal, the only goal really, is to fight to stay alive. There aren’t many other analogies that can suffice.

The bottom line is that chronic diseases of all kinds breed toughness, and, as a result, a language has developed around them that is in no way trite or threadbare.

I call myself a survivor, a warrior, or better yet a slayer because when I do, those words make me feel strong — never inadequate.

this is not how i'm trying to roll.

It’s been a rough two weeks filled with delayed freelancing money, a lot of bickering at home, and a virus-infected computer.

To put it plainly, this Slayer has been stressed. And that isn’t a good thing.

I am a true believer in the mind-body connection, so after I was diagnosed, I made a promise to myself to live a tranquil and peaceful existence. As far as I’m concerned, stress-induced cancer recurrences are real. In fact, two years ago, I experienced one first-hand.

Well, it wasn’t really an occurrence but rather some dormant cancer cells that I believe were triggered into action when my mom was hospitalized.

In 2008, I was finishing up what was supposed to have been my last chemo treatment. When the nurse unplugged me, I was so happy that the entire experience was over that I actually burst into tears. For several weeks prior, my family had been planning a big celebration. And I spent a lot of time congratulating myself on making it through. No more chemo, no more needles, no more planning my life around cancer — or so I believed.

My last session ended on a Thursday. That Friday, my mom was admitted to the intensive care unit at a hospital in Delaware. Needless to say, I headed down there to take care of her. I spent all of my time traveling to and from the hospital, talking to doctors and specialists, and helping moms get through physical rehab.

After a month or so, my mom got better, but then my doctors found some leftover cancer in my abdomen that flared up. There’s little doubt in my mind that  it was stress related. I had literally worried myself sick and, as a result, had to resume chemo treatments.

Since then, I’ve adopted an anti-stress regime to prevent it from happening again. It includes yoga, regular deep breathing, and a bottle of gin.

Unfortunately, none of my go-to remedies have been much help over the last two weeks. My morning yoga sessions leave me feeling relaxed until I check my e-mail, which is about every 10 minutes or so. I’ve been having a virtual battle over e-mail recently with one of my employers about contract delays, glitches in the matrix, and invoices. It seem they couldn’t care less that I have bills to pay.

The constant drama has turned my deep breathing into sighs of frustration, and that bottle of gin I mentioned. Well, it’s got a swig or two left, but I don’t have the cash to re-up.  Actually, I’ve traded in the booze for green tea, which is a much healthier tonic.

Unfortunately, though, it looks like that stress factor of the last two weeks really has taken its toll. I just received the lab results from my chemo session yesterday, and my CA-125, a blood test that measures cancer in the body, jumped from 87 to 154. Normal is 35 or below.

Until this week, my numbers had been on a nice downward trend, decreasing slowly but surely. And just that quickly they shot up. After making good progress, today I’m feeling like I’ve been running a steady race only to find out that the finish line got moved back a few miles.

But I’m keeping it all in perspective. Not too long ago, my numbers were in the thousands. And I’ve had small increases before. After the last little spike, my doctor, God bless her, told me straight up, “I’m not worried.”

I’m raising a cup of green tea in her honor and hoping that she says the same thing next week.