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

jancie

I immediately took a lorazepam when I got home because I was waiting for the chit to hit the fan so I needed to be calm through it.  It didn't stop me from walking tonight so that was nice.  I am feeling a little bit lazy though.

suzieq60

DH getting better - he caught it from the other people on the bus - it's been going around. Now he has a cough. I'm getting a head cold - lots of them have that too. I do not like bus tours!!!

I absolutely love Ireland - OMG - it reminds me of NZ. We're on the road again this am - to Kinsale. They have the opportunity to play Old Head so we have to leave early. Not sure if DH will though.

Sue

rosemary-b

Sunflowers

I have no idea how they measure indoor allergens.The rain helped a little but I really do thnk I have a cold and it is in my chest. Carp! Not again.

I took my regular antihistimine (Xyzal-sounds like a made up name doesn't it) yesterday morning and a Benedryl at 6:00 PM and another Benedryl at 11:00 pm (doctor's idea for really bad days) and woke up this morning and my cough was worse. Second cold this summer!!! 

Well I hate colds and complain more about them than about things that are much worse so I will shut up now.

ETA: We were without power for 5 hour yesterday. We have a generator but we have to be careful about what we run. Most of the time we were at the grandsons birthday party at Jungle Joe's(100 inflatable pieces of play equipment- fun if yo're five!

Bren-2007

Morning Everyone!

Sugar ... Congrats on your 2 years .. the facial sounds heavenly!

Jancie .. I don't envy you with your stepson.  I think I'd pull my hair out in frustration.

Susie .. Sorry to hear you and DH are suffering from colds, but it sounds like a wonderful trip through Ireland.

Rosemary ... Sure hope you're not getting another cold.  Jungle Joe's sounds like a hoot!  I think it might give me a headache though.  ha!

Tim is on his way home today.  Yay!  This week has gone by so slowly!  Sure do miss all the NOTL gals, after all the excitement, it sure was quiet around here.  I get my pics back on Tuesday .. so I will have lots of new photos to post.

Hope everyone has a great day,

Bren

rosemary-b

Bren

Jungle Joe's was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Nothing like seeing great big smiles on your grandchildren's faces.

Wabbit

jancie ... excess tomatoes might be good for throwing at DH and the stepson!  Not a good idea to ever take advice from me though .

I've been dealing with tomatoes too ... made 10 quarts of spaghetti sauce yesterday.  I don't can either ... I freeze it (just barely cooked tomatoes too) and it works just fine.

Susieq ... love that you are sharing your travels with us!

Rosemary ... feeling for you with the cold.  Nothing quite as miserable as stuffed up and hacking your lungs up.  Hope the drugs knock it back quickly! 

Bren will be having that lasagna for dinner tonight and with Tim coming home and being surprised with dinner all cooked we probably won't be hearing much from her today   Looking forward to your pictures.

Haven't decided what I'm going to do today.  Right now 'nothing' sounds like my first choice so may go with that and just goof off all day.l  

suzieq60

We're now in Kinsale - lovely little town - our room has a sea view!!!! Only get 1/2 hr free internet.

DD having trouble with DH's car - he seemed calm when I read her email - luckily we have a garage really close to home so she can get it fixed for him. She went away overnight and left Miss Poppy in the house, now she's not liking her much when she'd been hopping into bed with her before and making me jealous.

We have 2 nights here then off to Dublin.

Sue

1Athena1

Early afternoon, everyone! I have cut back on my hours of work for now (no work on weekends) and I am beginning to feel slightly more refreshed. I was able to clean house today (meaning teeny apartment) and pay bills with care and get rid of unwanted items. Next I may go about planning how to have a life - lol!

I don't follow cancer recurrence rates much because I am a skeptic who thinks it is somewhat the luck of the draw anyway.....although I do, secretly. I set my three year "survivorship" (I word I don't think should ever apply to us early stagers) in November - the month in 2008 when I discovered my lump, which turned out to be cancer.

I had a grade 3 tumour, very weakly hormone-positive, so in many ways I see myself as a triple-neg. I understand that, according to the superstition - er, excuse me, epidimiological studies which apply to groups and not to individuals, if I survive the first three years without metastasis "my" chances (reality check: the statistical trend of a group of women in my situation) of survival improve (wrong, actually, the longer you go without cancer, the higher the probability that your number will come up eventually since it hasn't already - incredible that no one takes note of this). So, if you can ignore the reality checks in my brackets, the superstition should go that I am heading towards three years and, if I am not in pain, that is good (although I could well have mets and just not feel them - as I said, ignore the brackets).

Therefore, this fantastical three year sprint to the epidemiological house-of-cards finish in my mind, any slight discomfort in my right breast makes me panic. I finally decided that the pains (which are not pains - they are temporary sensations of discomfort) are due to weightlifting. And to prove that point to myself, in my half-rational, half-cancer statistics-religion-obsessed brain, I celebrate any pain and discomfort on my left side as proof that it is exercise induced and not cancer. Because, of course, I would never entertain the possibility of bilateral recurrence despite chopped off breasts.

And no, I am not going to the doctor's barring actual pain and a real impact on my life. I don't care to know if I have mets ages before I really feel them since there is no cure anyway. Besides, I only feel anything occasionally, irregularly, and more in keeping with too many chest presses and bicep curls. 

I now know what cancer has done to me: it has brought out an innate skepticism of our society and its over-reliance on statistics, its mistaken interpretation of epidemiological studies as predictors of individual cases, its substitution of numbers games for actual science, and the pink ribbon's stubborn refusal to look beyond existing science for better answers. It's ok for people to preach more chemo, more radiation, more surgery and more hormone therapy. It is NOT ok for them to say to a person that those half-baked solutions to a still poorly understood disease improve their "chances." You can't split a person into two. Strictly, mathematically speaking, a person's chances are always 50-50. They are only better than usual if it is known for sure that your cancer is not aggressive, for example, or if a chemo assay could show you to be extremely responsive to Taxol/Herceptin. I sometimes wonder if statistics has unwittingly turned into a weapon against true scientific inquiry in certain cancers. Kudos to the discoverers of Herceptin for the 50 percent solution it represents for those who qualify for it. Thank God for surgery. As for everything else, we need more science. I need more certainty. Barring that, I need more humility and admission of ignorance on the part of the medical community. As a patient, I need the false optimism and medical conservatism of the pink ribbon movement to disappear forever. Along with it, the traditional feminine ethos of compliance, smiling stoicism and hesitance to raise hell for a cure to disappear. Finally, we need to be rid of organizations like Komen and others whose very existence depends on a non cure. There is too much riding on the status quo and not enough invested in new science. I blame patients, doctors and advocates for this. We have to stop swallowing the rhetoric that pats us on the shoulder, shows as statistical tables and feeds as half-truths so twisted that they end up being lies.

Thank you for listening to my totally unexpected rant on this nice, productive, relaxing day! 

 

jancie

Athena - I shouldn't have read your rant right when I woke up because my head is spinning.  I wake up in a fog so it is hard for me to digest anything so I will read it again later!

Rabbit - do you just blanch your tomatoes and remove the skin and then freeze them or do you cut them up?  Sounds easy - something I could do.

Wabbit

jancie ... blanch them - remove the skin - then cut them up and cook them for 5 or 10 minutes.  I freeze them in pint containers but you could use freezer bags too.  Is easy ... a little messy but not a bad job.

Morning Athena!  Glad to hear you have cut back on working all the time.  I know lots of people are angry at frustrated at Komen.  But ... people with other cancers can only wish they got half the attention breast cancer gets and Komen did a lot to bring it out of the closet and generate lots of funding.  Not perfect and sometimes it does seem like most charities turn into businesses when they get big.   I really do think we are much better off than we would have been if they did not exist though. 

Anonymous

I'm closer to WR on Komen.  Am also reading The Emperor of Maladies - seems to be stirring up lots in me - only 1/2 way through - still appreciate how far we'ver come, re: bc, since "Halsted" radicals.

Also understand Athena, this is a different world, Emperor refers to Sontag's book often.  Will probably read that one next.  May need to put a "lighter" one inbetween tho.

Ang7

Hey Athena~

I really do enjoy your posts...

rosemary-b

Athena

Your post gave me a lot of food for thought. I could think better if 6 grandchildren had not just left. Maybe I'll have a reply to some of your points later. They were excellent.

The party was fun but one of the kids was a wreck. Glad to see them come and glad to see them go!

bluedahlia

I've had a busy weekend too and am tired.  Will catch up tomorrow.

CherrylH

Rosemary, that's the joy of being a grandparent (or in my case a godmother) - enjoy, play, spoil, indulge and send home. I'm getting over my regret of not having had children

1Athena1

Edited to avoid double-posting on cancer.  

1Athena1

'Morning all --

I am off to my club for the first time in days and feeling rested. Barbara, I am open-mouthed at the mild August. Highs will be in the mid-eighties this week! My health is slowly returning to normal, I think.

Listening to NPR about Libya, which I take with a grain of salt because we hear that news without knowing who the rebels really are, and knowing that the military in Egypt is cracking down on civilians. Talk about intractable problems.... 

BarbaraA

Morning all. Thus begins the dreaded week in h$ll in Tulsa. Not that I have anything against Tulsa, it is just that I don't want to be doing what I have to do. I hate my job. On that front, however, I had a call with a guy I have known for years and he recently changed jobs. So he asked for my resume. Not getting my hopes up but fingers crossed.

Athena, just amazing for August.

So, I head out of town while a hurricane is supposed to come. I will be instructing DH via phone about what to do. Sigh. Fat chance I get back on Friday. Sigh. I am here today and gone tomorrow. Sigh. Can you tell I REALLY don't want to go?

rosemary-b

Barbara It stinks when you hate a job. Maybe you'l find a great restaurant in Tulsa. Or ...Tulsa....hmmm...Sorry to anyone in Tulsa but I can't think of a good thing there....no bad ones either though...just nothing. Maybe somebody has ideas.

BarbaraA

Well, there is a bright side. I have two friends whom I dearly love who live there so I have dinner going for two nights. I am working with people from my company whom I have never even met. Oh this stinks.

1Athena1

Barbara, I'm so sorry! I know what it is like to have a job one loathes (thank God not a problem for me) - and on top of that is worked to death on. I had a 14 hour-a-day job I just despised ages ago. I really hope your friend's prospect turns up something. It's a nasty job market, but nothing lasts forever.

Bren-2007

((( Barbara )))  So sorry you have to go to Tulsa.  I know how much you were dreading this trip.  Hope Irene scoots right by you and you have no problems getting home on Friday!

hugs buddy,

Bren

208sandy

BarbaraA:

Chin up, I hate that you hate your job - everyone of us has had one of "those" but like I used to tell DH I'd rather eat than not so....

Sandy

pip57

Athena...ditto on your "rant".  I could have written those words myself. 

crazy4carrots

Yes, Athena touched on a few things that I've been struggling with too.  Others will argue about the 50/50 chance of surviving this disease, but even though my onc tells me that statistically I have only a 12% chance or recurrence, I still say that it's 50/50 whether or not I fall into the 12% yes, or the 88% no.

As for more research and science, well, I can assure you all that there is more "science" going on than any of us could possibly imagine.  But here's the problem -- we are individuals, we are not made of the same cloth, whereby a remedy/cure works for everyone.  It isn't as though a bacterium has infected each of us, and we have a choice of 4 different antibiotics to fight it, knowing that at least one of them WILL work, and wipe out the disease caused by that lousy bacterium.  Frankly, I believe most scientists agree that, until they can specifically and categorically declare what it IS that causes the cancer in each one of us, they will never truly be able to cure it in you or in me.  Because, what caused my BC is very likely NOT what caused yours, or your neighbour's, or your great-aunt's.

I have to disagree with Athena about organizations like Komen existing to maintain the status quo.  Komen has become much, much larger than Ms Brinker probably originally intended, and with that growth has come a great deal of controversy.  It's been said of many large organizations that if a cure for this, or another, disease is found, what would happen to those organizations?   Well, there used to be a Canadian Tuberculosis Society.  Now it's the Canadian Lung Association, raising funds for research into COPD, lung cancer etc.

I'm also currently reading The Emperor of All Maladies, BTW.... 

Anonymous

Lindasa,

Ver well known doctors are working closely with Komen, I respect the research they're doing - funding millions ( can't remember the ####) of dollars of research, coordinated by their Scientific Advisory Council ( I think is the name) This activity isn't as well known as the "races, pink ribbons" but it's a vital part of their work.  Remind myself in the 1970's it was WONDERFULLY RADICAL for Betty Ford to go PUBLIC about her breast cancer. Also reading TEOAM and deeply appreciative of the "public" organizing it took to get to where Cancer is a word that can be used openly - esp. bc.  

When Brinker's sister died, much , MUCH less was possible for women with bc.

Bren-2007

Just popping in to wish Happylibby a good surgery day tomorrow. 

Getting ready to run some errands after a great little morning nap.

hugs to all,

Bren

suzieq60

(((((((((((Athena))))))))) - rant all you want sweetie

(((((((((((((Libby)))))))))) - hope the surgery goes well

Blarney Castle today - I didn't climb up but loved the gardens and the outside of the castle.

Very tired - bus travel is awful.

Sue

crazy4carrots

Sunflowers -- It took Happy Rockefeller, Shirley Temple Black and Betty Ford to bring BC out of the closet.  When my mom was dx'd in 1966, it was still hush hush and "we just don't talk about breasts, let alone breast cancer".  Let's not ever go back there.....

Adding my good wishes for successful surgery and a fast recovery for dear HappyLibby! 

Anonymous

LIndasa - I didn't realize Happy Rockefeller was "public" too.  But then, my head was REALLY in the sand for years.

HL - congratulations on your Big SPECIAL DAY tomorrow - it's going to be wonderful, and you will be SO HAPPY when it's over.  Thinking of you with sunflower sunshine good wishes