WHY I WRITE THESE THINGS

Springtime in Borrego

Probably 2009

From time to time I get a little bummed out about this blog.  I love doing it, that’s the bottom line.  However, I am sometimes skeptical of its value.  Is anybody really reading these carefully crafted  meticulously researched little gems?  (Well, it usually takes me at least an hour to put one together, including the time needed to dig up the facts.)  I’m not sure.  If I leave an entry on Blogger without inflicting it on Facebook I can expect to get 20-40 hits – in six months or so.  Many of these are from places like Ukraine or Moldova, and are vanishingly unlikely to represent real human beings.  If I put it on Facebook I can look forward to 20-40 hits in a month or so – most on the first day.  Also, I get up to perhaps ten “likes”; usually far fewer.  Hell, I could get ten “likes” by posting a picture of a dead spider!  The evidence, as they say about global warming, is inescapable: “Myrl’sBlog” is not a big hit, in the usual sense of the term.  So why do I keep on blogging?  Here’s why.  (It just came to me this morning.)

When Linda was diagnosed with epithelial ovarian cancer, I literally had almost no idea of what that meant.  Rolled back on my heels, I perforce accepted the oncologist’s assessment without means of eliciting important information.  Of course, I knew that ovarian cancer was cancer of the ovaries.  Here is a partial list of things I didn’t know, but should have learned.

What stage was she in?

What is the prognosis?

What does the epithelial part mean?

Are there clinical trials she could benefit from?

Are there novel treatment protocols permeating the practice?

Who is the best damned OVCA oncologist in the known universe?

And so forth.  It wouldn’t have been necessary, or even very useful, to spout stuff about PARP inhibitors, targeted therapies, immune system manipulation, etc., etc. – heck, the oncologist I was talking to probably had no time to follow up such esoteric stuff.  But he could have answered several of those questions, and told me where to look for answers to the rest.  I simply didn’t know what to ask.

So here is why I think this blog remains useful.  I AM TELLING YOU WHAT TO ASK!  You can search my list of (over 360) blogs for things like “clinical trials”, or “targeted therapies”, or “types of ovarian cancer”, and you will find basic information and clues as to where to learn more.  Then if, God forbid, you need to ask the questions I couldn't' ask – you will know what to say.  A particularly important blog in this regard is the following:

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2014/07/clinical-trials-and-how-to-find-them.html

I wish to hell there had been a Myrl’sBlog in 2007, and I had been reading it.  And that is why I will keep on writing this thing.