Linda and the twins, on a winter day in Michigan
I am enjoying a world-class case of shingles right now, so I
haven’t much energy to spare for digging into the cancer literature. Ebola has chased all other health-related
stories from my usual newspaper sources, and Dick Ingwall seems to be in
transit to Borrego Springs so I haven’t been able to count on him. Rather
than sit around feeling sorry for myself, I decided to see if other people are
busy in the ovarian cancer field. I used
my old friend Google Scholar, and confined my search to articles published
since January 1, 2012. I searched for “exact
phrases” but left the author line blank.
It seems that in the last 34 months there have been 37,400 papers
published containing the phrase “ovarian cancer:. Getting more specific, I find that over 1000
of them relate to early detection, slightly over 300 deal specifically with
prevention, and the rest – presumably – with therapy. I guess I should be pleased that there is so
much attention being paid to ovarian cancer, but I am mildly disappointed that
early detection and prevention are so conspicuously under-represented. And that’s all the energy I have for
today. My main reason for posting this blog, if you must know, is to share this wonderful picture.
I just learned that this shingles thing may go on for as much as five or six weeks, and that in a substantial number of cases pain continue for months, or even years! Cuss that kid who gave me chickenpox 75 years ago!
ReplyDeleteThe word is, if you’re 60 or older, get the damned shot!
Oh No! Sorry to hear about the shingles! I hope you have a short case. Is there something you can take to help?
ReplyDeleteYes, they have me on a course of something called acyclovir, or something like that. It's supposed to help. I do seem to be getting better. Woops! Time to swallow another pill.
ReplyDelete