I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

pip57

Kam, I had the same experience with my hair.  I never would have cut it so short if I hadn't been bald.  So easy to look after now.  Yeah chemo?

Bren-2007

Hi Everyone,

Haven't read back yet, but wanted to post a pic of the three of us today.  On the left is Brenda (Naniam), Pammy and Me.  We all met six years ago on BCO and have remained close since then.  Pammy drove up from Georgia and I drove down from Virginia.  I miss them so much already!

208sandy

Could we please spend the "pink" money on research into AIs - honestly if there is a worse drug I don't know what it could be - just a thought for those of us who now have permanent problems from those d*****md drugs.

suzieq60

Bren - lovely pic - glad you had some good time together.

bluedahlia

Love the pic Bren.  Love you gals.  Wish I could have been there.

bluedahlia

bluedahlia

bluedahlia

bluedahlia

KITTENS anyone?

IllinoisLady

IllinoisLady

Blue....I adore the kitties and as well the cartoon right above them. 

Jackie

bluedahlia

1Athena1

Sandy - I second that - for Tamoxifen!

Speaking of pink crap, etc.... I am really enjoying a book that voraciousreader recommended - The Big Squeeze. It is the story of how politics more than science influenced the messaging that mammograms save lives for women in their forties. The author is himself a radiologist. It is an excellent, short read. It also describe how breast cancer was sold to the public as an epidemic with no evidence to back such a comparison, in order to sell that mammogram message.

IllinoisLady

IllinoisLady

Athena...sounds like a very good book.  Also, goes along with all the women that found their own tumors ~~~~~ when mammograms were missing them.  I do understand that it can happen.  I had two different  -- one aggressive and one non-aggressive tumor  in the same breast.  The non-aggressive was there a long time and always required a US study each time.  It was small and lazy and most of it got sucked up in the biopsy needle. 

The other much larger one was hiding and the only reason it was found was that it was under a bruise that I had for about 3 months before my lumpectomy.  The surgeon, Dr. Ryan ( a lady surgeon ) lifted out the dead bruise material.....and just kept messing around ( saved my life I'm sure ) and found the much more aggressive and much larger Ductal tumor which is what threw me into 6 mos. of chemo and 7 weeks of rads. 

I was fortunate in that even with all this, she got clean margins and my sentinel nodes were all  ( 3 ) clean as a whistle.  I would never go without a mammogram, but they are a tool along with US's and breast exams and one needs to avail themselves sometimes of several tests.  Just interesting to hear about this viewed from the knowledge of how a good thing is not always the perfect thing for someone. 

Jackie

crazy4carrots

Athena -- you have an interesting take on that book.  I read it about a month ago and what I took from it was that the author/radiologist wanted to emphasize the actual reason for the "increase" in bc over the past several years.  Digital mammos are picking up tiny tumours that may -- or may not -- turn out to grow and become lethal.  Consequently, far more lumpectomies and masts, and sometimes double masts are being performed because once bc has been found, both patient and doctor are very reluctant to leave it in place.

Here's an example:  an acquaintance, age 53, was dx'd with a 4mm IDC last year.  She had a partial mast, followed by 19 weeks of rads, and 5 years of arimidex.  Last week she had recon surgery on left breast and a "lift" on the right to match.

Doc told her she had "the best kind of bc there is".   The question is:  would that tiny tumour have ever become lethal, or would it (as they actually sometimes do) stay lazy or even disintegrate?  Who would be prepared to hang around to find out?  Not many........

Enjoyful

This is just too funny!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QxiHnhm8MCw

208sandy

Where do you FIND this stuff E?

IllinoisLady

Too funny...I think I liked the kangaroo best. 

Jackie

YramAL

Just saw this on facebook-thought it was valid. Of course, it's followed by the blather that "our 2nd Amendment rights are being taken away." Because of course,preserving those rights is so much more important than basic human rights.

Mary

crazy4carrots

Sometimes it seems that the ONLY freedom the gun lovers hold dear is the freedom to own their precious weapons.

I'd add one more point for the liberal column, Mary:  Belief in keeping the government out of our wombs and the bedrooms of the nation.

Anonymous

Yeah, Mary.  I really appreciated that one.

I also appreciate limited government, keep your ultrasound wands away from women who do not want to be pregnant. Allow that decision to be between a woman, her family, and her doctor.

IllinoisLady

I think we all like a little less government -- but the right kind of less.  I also think we do not need others to act as our conscience.  I was given this body  and figure that wouldn't have happened if I couldn't figure out how to deal with it -- whatever circumstances may befall it.  I have this responsibility so butt out and let it be on my head. 

I rather look on it almost like telemarketers and mass mailings.  I don't need the intrusions from all of them.  If I need what they have they won't have to bombard me with it every other day.  I'm quite capable of "hunting" them up at the appropriate time.  Otherwise, their literature and intrusions just irritate me and I look for someone OTHER than them with the same product and get it from the person who didn't hound me half of my life.

Jackie

crazy4carrots

From AddInfo:

One must begin to ask why Republicans are so obsessed with the sexuality of American citizens. Why is it that they want to regulate it? Is it not the Republican mantra to keep government out of our lives; out of our bedrooms?

Yet it seems that they are constantly trying to interject their supposed belief system on everyone else. Yesterday Chris Matthews did a piece about Montana lawmakers wanting to make gay sex a crime. Addicting Info writer Lorraine Devon Wilke also covered the story extensively in her piece, “GOP Rep Declares No One Except Those Procreating Should Have Sex, Especially Not Gays”. The video provides a window into the mindset of those that believe it is their right to control everyone else’s sexuality.

Rep. Dave Hagstrom (R-MT)

I have a whole lot of love and respect for a whole number of homosexual friends. So there is no homophobic issues going on here at all with me….. I kinda likened it like this. This  pen has two purposes. The first purpose of course is to write. The second purpose is to retract so that it doesn’t leave a stain on your shirt or your purse. So that’s two purposes. But one is primary, the other is secondary. To me sex is primarily purposed to produce people…. Sex that doesn’t produce people is deviant. That doesn’t mean that it is a problem. It just mean it’s not doing its primary purpose.

IllinoisLady

I hope people are able to see though Rubio loud and clear:

Senator Marco Rubio, the GOP’s Great Light Brown Hope, went on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday and spent about fifteen minutes saying, well, basically nothing. Although he did mention he wouldn’t mind turning his fellow Latinos into a permanent underclass of slaves. There was that.

Host Bob Schieffer introduced Rubio as a “key member” of the so-called Gang of Eight who are working on immigration reform. Rubio immediately launched into his well-prepared spiel about how undocumented immigrants need to step forward to identify themselves, pass a rigorousbackground check, and pay a fine in order to get a worker permit.

None of this sounds particularly onerous until Rubio continued. From CBS:

“…it will allow them to stay in the US, work, travel and pay taxes. They will not qualify for any federal benefits of any kind, including Obamacare and they will have to be in that system for over ten years before they can apply to the existing legal  immigration system for a green card…”

 

That sounds an awful lot like legalized slavery. You pay taxes for things that you are not legally allowed to benefit from? Like unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare? What about food stamps and Medicaid? Curiously, one of the key complaints from the Tea Party is that the government is “stealing” people’s money via taxes. They always gloss over the part where they are personally benefitting from those taxes, but imagine if they were legally forbidden from getting certain government services in return? They would go on a rampage. It seems unlikely that Rubio’s attempts to use millions of immigrants to fund other people’s retirements and healthcare will bother the faux fiscal conservatives very much.

Another interesting aspect to Rubio’s “fix” is the built-in mechanism for failure. By linking the ability of undocumented immigrants to enter the existing immigration infrastructure to the implementation of universal E-verify, Entry-Exit tracking and “securing the border,” Rubio is ensuring that they will NEVER be able to gain legal status. Aside from the glitchy nature of E-Verify, the states that rely on migrant workers working for pennies will do everything in their power to stymie the implementation. Georgia stands as a stark example of what happens when you actually drive away the only workers willing to do the kind of back-breaking labor necessary to pick crops for the kind of poverty wages farmers are willing to offer. E-Verify would cripple several agriculturally dependent state economies.

This becomes a convenient excuse to keep sucking taxes out of “guest workers” while denying them the chance to ever profit from the labors of their work. Gee, we’re sorry we turned you into a permanent and codified underclass to finance our tax cuts. We hope to have the situation resolved sometime in the next century.

Some of Rubio’s final words on immigration reform, of course, were a sop to the racists in his party who are always in need of cover for their nativist rantings on “securing the border:”

“…what keeps us up at night is the worry that a terrorist can come across that border one day or the activities that are being undertaken there now by criminal gangs that are human traffickers.”

Yes, the terrorists are swarming across the border. Would this be the same border that we made such a huge effort not bothering to secure after 9/11? The same border that Obama doubled the number of agents working to secure? And the gangs are obviously a HUGE problem! Why, they took over a whole ranch in Texas and NO ONE DID ANYTHING! Because in the state with a cowboy for a governor, that sort of thing could totally happen. For reals. And don’t forget about all the headless bodies in the Arizona desert.

Now, this is isn’t to say that drug violence isn’t a problem or that a terrorist couldn’t sneak into the country from Mexico but let’s be honest: this is nothing more than hand waving and thin excuses for “securing the border.” What this really means, though, (and it’s the loudest of dog whistles and about as subtle as a Mack truck) is “NO MORE MEXICANS!” In this era of “Republican outreach,” in which calling Mexicans “wetbacks” is slightly more frowned upon than usual (but just slightly), having a Hispanic Republican pretend that what the right is really worried about is terrorists and gangs is kind of sad.

I wonder if someone’s already coined the phrase “Uncle Juan?”

1Athena1

Lindasa - are you sure we read the same book? It is quite critical about the politics surrounding mammography. For example, it describe how the Obama administration, for example, decided to ignore a task force's recommendations on mammography. VR and I had a different take, I believe.

1Athena1

I don't care about the size of government - whether more or less. I care about GOOD government. Good government stops at your doorstep. In other areas, though, we need more government, not less. One is election reform. Another is health care for all. Also: end corporate welfare for incompetent CEOs.

crazy4carrots

Athena:  Yes, we read the same book!  I was surprised (and delighted) to find that a highly regarded radiologist was the author, for one thing!  And I'm not denying that he was highly critical of the politics.  But..what I mostly remember (and this is my personal take) was how so many more tumours are being found using more and more sophisticated mammo techniques, and the impact these tumour discoveries has on follow-up healthcare -- scans, surgery, rads, chemo etc., not to mention the emotional impact it has on the individual.

I'm reminded of that adage "Be careful what you wish for, you might just find it".  The mantra for breast cancer (and any cancers, for that matter) has been early detection.  But as he points out, there ARE tiny tumours that could never amount to anything, or could die their own natural death.  But once detected, then the whole cancer machinery must be employed.

As I said before, that was my main takeaway from his book, and it made me continue to think of the financial impact on our country's economics and certainly the emotional and physiological impact on patients. Your main takeaway was different!

bluedahlia

bluedahlia