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

Oh God Athena - can't believe all this was going on - praying that your scan is clean and you can have surgery - as for other treatments I'm with you on hormonals - glad your family is with you and that you like your doctors - sending love and hugs, S.

Athena, sendig hugs, good vibes and prayers for clean scans. I would like candles, but that would be a fire hazard in the middle of all my packing. I'm in the midst of so much right now and can't be online a lot, but you are never far from my thoughts. Love to you, dear Lioness!!

The bar is open. Free drinks and snacks for everyone.

Hi, all, checking in to see if Athena hs any good news - CLEAN SCANS to tell us about.

Hoping Blue is having fun where ever she is..

and Bren, hope Tim is doing well

Hugs to E - I still have trouble even thinking about "a hammer" - you wonderful woman - thinking of you. Sugar Cubes & carrots, and wine.

Doing my usual news program right now. 

Jackie

Oh Athena

I am so sorry for your bad news. We are all here for you.

Athena - Sending my most heartfelt prayers your way tonight.  Hate this damned disease.

Enjoyful - I can't imagine how you endured the biopsy.  Prayers for you too.  Hope you get to spend some time with your lovely horse and riding him soon.

Congrats Blue on new grandson.  Have not yet had that pleasure.

Great news - I checked Air NZ again and got cheap fares - all booked for December!!

Congrats, Blue on your happy news!

Congrats, Blue!!!

I'm G'Ma x 3 (all boys). What a joy those little guys are! But you already knew that! 

Amazingly beautiful, Blue!  I love him.

Awwww, what a cute little hunk!

Blue, we needed some good news like that!  He is beautiful and I am STILL jealous of all of you Grandmas out there!!!

Congrats, Blue.  Beautiful grandbaby!!!!

I read the article on BC and ,frankly, had a bunch of disagreements with it.  Yes, the author's right, too many women are still dying.  Yes, she's right, more resources, many more resources need to be allocated to finding and stopping the causes and treating late term disease. But she makes certain assumptions: that while the number of deaths are not going down, the occurrence of breast cancers have not gone up.  I.e. she assumes that the finding of more cancesr is due to mammograms and not due to any overall increase in the raw number of cancers - despite the increase of chemicals, added hormones in food etc. in our environment.     She's on the "overtreatment" bandwagon - and particularly in the case of DCIS and that's where I really start to disagree.  She makes the statement that only 30-50 percent of DCIS cases go on to become invasive, indicating that we overtreat DCIS - that it is more harmful to society as a whole to promote treatment of DCIS as cancer - with many women (like me) opting for MX in the face of widespread DCIS.  Yet she acknowledges that there's no way currently to know which cases of DCIS will become invasive and she also acknowledges that even a few invasive cells have the potential to travel.   So her logical argument fails - mastectomy for DCIS is overtreatment even though half to a third will become invasive and even though random cells can break off from even the smallest invasive tumor -and there is no way to know for sure which cancers will travel.  She is on the "save money" bandwagon.  How many women whose DCIS was caught and treated would have wound up with invasive?  If 50 percent do go on to become invasive, and there are 40,000 new cases of DCIS each year, that would be 20,000 women who would go on to invasive if the DCIS is not treated.  How many cases would not be caught before those pesky cells migrate to other parts of the body?

Sorry to rant - but the over treatment argument makes me crazy.  People are looking to"save money" by avoiding "overtreatment" and that will cost women's lives.  Maybe in economic terms, a few thousand women dying is cheaper than treating a hundred thousand women, but I'm not willing to be a statistic in order to lower medical costs as a society.