Linda's mom Marion, Linda, Linda's sister Carolyn
What are they looking at? It must have been fascinating.
Where? Carolyn's housel When? Beats me.
This is getting discouraging. I am hanging around the house, “rehabbing” my
left knee, and bored to tears. I don’t
like anything on daytime TV, my serious reading puts me to sleep, and my conscience
won’t let me just relax and enjoy something entertaining. I should be writing more anti-cancer blogs,
but my chief sources of ideas all have dried up. Dick Ingwall is busy running the Anza-Borrego
Desert State Park Paleontology website, Parkfriend evidentially doesn’t read
the Toronto newspapers any more, and Carolyn is working now and has little time
for TIME or Yahoo. This leaves me to do my own research, and I
haven’t been making much progress. If I
were still going regularly to Seattle I would have more to write about – but I’m
not. So, nuts. The good news is that I find I can work the
clutch peddle in my jeep so, in a few scant weeks, I will be on my way to Borrego
Springs. Then, I fear, my blogs will really
dry up. Oh, well.
I did do some personal research using Google Scholar and
found myself reading a very depressing article.
Its title is “Current
Approaches and Challenges in Managing and Monitoring Treatment Response in
Ovarian Cancer”, published in Journal of Cancer just a few days ago. The gist of the article is that there are
multiple treatment regimens and protocols for applying them, all under intense
scrutiny – BUT, nothing so far impacts mortality. The ten-year survival rate for ovarian cancer
remains at about 10%. Much of the
article is given over to discussions of cost (tremendous) and quality-of-life
issues (important). The fact, and it is unassailable,
is that with regard to ovarian cancer we are doing a rotten job. We need a dramatic breakthrough, a paradigm
shift, or a heck of a lot of dumb luck. As
I said above, I am discouraged – but I am not giving up. Someday this damned disease will be curable,
and if I can help find the cure in any way at all I will be satisfied with a
life well spent.
Here. Read it yourself: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881218/
Do something fun! How about a movie?
ReplyDeleteApril 21, 2001. The occasion was the west coast 90th birthday party for my mom. I even know what we were looking at--another camera as I have the face-on version of this picture. My hand is on Linda's arm the same way. You were there, Myrl!
ReplyDeleteI wish we both could place our hands on her arm!
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