Cancer Bitch

Direct from the New York (Cancer) Times

(all the cancer news that fits)

Cancer, at Age 23

This video series is about life. But life with cancer. “Since the diagnosis, my life has been a slow emergency, my world a waiting room,” wrote Suleika Jaouad. “Each month I do a round of chemotherapy, and then the doctors examine my bone marrow to determine if I’m ready for transplant.” Since late March, Ms. Jaouad has written a series of articles for Well, an NYTimes.com blog about health and healthy living, on her leukemia diagnosis and her struggle against the disease. Her words are poignant and powerful. “Cancer has shocked and terrorized me into a wakefulness that I didn’t know existed. Now every decision, every moment feels both meaningful and fleeting.” Several videos that Ms. Jaouad did with the videographer Shayla Harris accompanied the series.

Lakewood & Byron, Wrigleyville, Chicago

Our well-traveled poppies have bloomed. They started out in Litchfield, Illinois, then a few plants went to Gary, Indiana, and now they've been in Chicago a few years. If you live on the north side, come by and admire them in person.

Embrace Your Allergies!

The New York Times refers us to Psychology Today to "The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Genius," Margie Profet (pictured above), whose articles in scientific journals claimed, among other things, that allergies expel toxins that cause cancer. Researchers at Cornell and UMass who studied other studies recently backed up her argument, according to PT, finding. that Inverse associations with allergies are more than twice as common among cancers of the nine tissues and organ systems that interface with the external environment—mouth, throat, colon, rectum, gray matter, pancreas, skin, cervix, and lung—versus the nine that do not, including the breast and prostate gland.
Good news, aside from the question, How can you trust scientists who say that the cervix interfaces with the outside world? Do they mean via childbirth? Swimming pools? Tornadoes? Not to mention the pancreas and colon.
And for nursing mothers, the breast does provide a link to the outside world.
Nonetheless, perhaps global warming, which has brought us an early spring and myriad allergens, is a blessing in disguise. For now.

Au Temps Perdu

illustration: Arthur Rackham

I am in Iowa City, where many years ago (many many) I was a graduate student in fiction in the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop. This image came to me yesterday and seems so apt: I imagine a stage, and on it walk dozens of Wendy Darlings in light blue gowns, walking back and forth, and each of them is holding a large shallow bowl full of water, and each is walking quickly yet also carefully because they don't want to spill the water because the water is their Potential.

Another reason to exercise regularly...

Those nice researchers at the Kinsey Institute found what the marketing folks would call "value added." Thanks, Dawn Turner Trice of the Tribune, for reporting on this.

Inquiry: Block cancer center

Fellow cancer folk: Have you been treated at the Block Center for Integrative Cancer Treatment in Skokie? A friend of a friend in California has stage four stomach cancer and is thinking of traveling to Block for treatment. You can describe your experience in the Comments section or email me at SLwisenberg (at) sbcglobal.net
Thanks.