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

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

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

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  

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 ... 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. 

Hey Athena~

I really do enjoy your posts...

Edited to avoid double-posting on cancer.  

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?

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.

((( 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

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

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.

(((((((((((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

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