FACEBOOK ADDICTION? Let's hope not.

Newfoundland, 2001

 

 

For years I have put a lot of effort into avoiding “social media”; things like Facebook , Twitter, LinkedIn  - you know, stuff like that.   My reasons for doing so were two-fold.  First, I am not of this century – or even of the last quarter of the previous century.  This makes it difficult for me to operate modern technology; my ineptitude often results in me having to ask my granddaughters for help.  Hell, grandfathers are supposed to give help, not beg for it.   Second, I feared that getting involved in stuff like that would give me another excuse to waste time.    At 80, how much time do I have to waste?   I have set my goal at curing ovarian cancer once and for all, and getting the Nobel Prize as my reward, before I die.  No time for Facebook.

But then, a few days ago, I did sign up for Facebook.  My excuse was that I could use it to trick more people into reading my blog.  It may help that way, but – just as I had feared – it has become an obsession.  Yesterday I must have spent several hours looking at pictures of people I really don’t know, and reading short exchanges of conversation between other people I also don’t know, about topics I know nothing about, and care about even less.  Maybe the novelty will wear off and I will get back to work.  Someday.

So, to make this blog worth writing I am going to pass on something I wrote a few days ago for the Bellingham Herald.  I strongly doubt that they will print it but, it being Ovarian Cancer Awareness month, I thought I’d try.  Here it is.

 

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Let’s talk about cancer.  What, you’d rather not?   I understand.  Heck, I spent most of my life trying not to even THINK about cancer, much less talk about it.  But it’s time to face the real world.  Buck up!

As I write this, Ovarian Cancer Awareness month is half over, and I’ll bet you didn’t know it.   Don’t feel bad; almost no one else did, either.   Sadly, almost no one has heard of Ovarian Cancer Month (September), even though it was proclaimed by the President himself!  Until recently I barely realized that there WAS such a thing as ovarian cancer, let alone that it had its own Month.  Things changed dramatically, however, about 2 ½ years ago when my wife died of OVCA.  Being over 75 at the time, and finding myself with no useful work to do, I decided to volunteer with some cancer research projects in Seattle, specifically the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research.

 I am a geologist by training, and during all my years of schooling I managed to avoid learning anything at all about biology.  (I figured it was for girls.)  In Seattle I expected to lick envelopes, file papers and other objects, and in general   perform tasks that required minimal skill or intelligence.  Instead, I found myself reading   material that I only vaguely understood, writing little laymen’s’ ditties about cancer– and studying desperately to get up to speed.  My “learning curve” was so steep   that climbing it required (and still requires) all the mental mountaineering skills I ever had, and more.  However, I have made a little progress, a  very little,  and I am going to share some of what I have learned with you.

Do NOT turn the page! 

Ovarian cancer is relatively uncommon, thank goodness, but given the current state of our knowledge it is one of the most deadly.    About 21,000 American women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer this year, and perhaps 14,000 will die.  If detected early enough, OVCA is curable.  The problem has been, and continues to be, that detecting it early is difficult.  There are symptoms, but they are easily confused with other conditions that are far less lethal.  Research is underway to find markers in the blood that will warn of an early approach of OVCA, but so far they have been disappointing.    Some new approaches to this problem are being investigated at Fred Hutch and elsewhere; there is reason to hope, but success is far from certain.  Progress also is being made in treatment methods, but here again the pace of improvement is painfully slow.  Possibly the brightest star on the horizon concerns  prevention.

It is difficult to prevent any type of cancer absolutely,  because many cancers  arise from genetic changes -- mutations - that occur spontaneously.  Some of us are born with mutated genes that increase the probability of contracting cancer, but no cancer is truly inherited.    The likelihood of having inherited dangerously damaged genes can be assessed by examining your “pedigree”; did your near relatives suffer from the specific disease in unusually high numbers?  Ethnicity also makes a difference; for instance, women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent have an elevated risk of contracting OVCA.  Presumably an unusually high  fraction of these women are born with one or more mutations that, with the help of other random, spontaneous, genetic mistakes,  result in the disease.   I could give other examples but I have only 177 words left to play with in this essay so I must get on with it.

If you are high-risk and have all the children you want you might considerer lowering your risk of OVCA by getting rid of both your ovaries and your fallopian tubes.  Lately it has begun to appear that having the fallopian tubes alone removed will do the job nearly as well, and spare you possible complications.  See your doctor.  See a genetics counselor 

Space requires that I  resort to sending you to the Web. 

For symptoms:  http://www.marsharivkin.org/ovarian-cancer/symptoms.html 

Risk factors:  http://www.cancer.org/cancer/ovariancancer/detailedguide/ovarian-cancer-risk-factors

For what Fred Hutch is doing about it:  http://www.fhcrc.org/en/diseases/ovarian-cancer.html.

To follow my amusing climb up the learning curve:  http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/