Topic : 01/04 "What I Want This Year!"

It's too bad the web staff hasn't upgraded the board software to an updated version which permits you to pick & choose what is retained from the message you're replying to.  It would make things far easier to read & deal with.  I know a lot of people start banging and posting without really crafting a message.  Your message is a case of where there's a lot of good material to follow up on.  And it's difficult not being able to intersperse my reply with your post and remove the parts which aren't germane to what I have to say.

In terms of finding a 6.5cm lump, that's just over two inches (2.54cm=1inch)!  How could you not find that via self-examination? Even for overweight women who have larger breasts because of fat should be able to find something of that size.

As far as the diagnostic tool used, there's something which isn't paraded in the news

(I read too much - six newspapers daily, a lot of magazines...the missus wasn't quite prepared twenty years ago for how much and how fast information I can process & store away, and see how to connect the dots.She knows to blame it on my mom. She taught me to read when I was two and continually says it's what inspired her to become a teacher. She said she didn't know what to do or how to do it, so it was letters on blocks, magnetic words on a board, then the newspaper when it arrived every morning.)

Back to point.

What isn't thown about in the press and should generate a bit more attention is this:  for a lump to show up on a mammogram, it is likely (on average) to have had the core cells at least ten years.  Here in Indiana ("There's more than corn in Indiana" as an amusement park advertises), biomedical things are getting a lot of attention, in the press (not just business magazines or business sections, news.. period), in financial investments, everything. The orthopedic captial of the world is where I grew up (Warsaw): Zimmer, Biomet, Depuy, Othy, and a few others I don't know about as occasionally a crew will get together and start something even more cutting edge; e.g., Biomet, a big company was started by a single employee from Zimmer.

Indiana and Purdue University each are focusing heavily on biomedical research. There's a branch of both here in Indianapolis as a single school (IUPUI - Indiana University / Purdue University at Indianapolis) and you can get your degree from either college.  At least four large ethanol plants are in or will be in operation soon.

Anyway.  Purdue University is currently working on a blood test which would provide for a woman the same information men can get in a PSA.  They're working with larger samples (a test tube or less) and will scale down as they learn more. A PSA isn't all-definitive, but if something shows up...for me, I'm forty-four, I was cleared by my urologist (a woman - my choice) five years ago to wait until I'm fifty. I was passing a little blood and made an appointment immediately.  She scoped me, didn't find anything. It stopped, then started again. It turned out she'd accidentally nicked me just enough so when the clot slipped off, the blood came back.  That's when she decided to scope everything. Carefully.  It would appear I can sympathize with a close, older relative who, in the process of treatment for prostate cancer discovered bladder cancer, likely saving his life. The prostate treatment, however, had some side effects and he has to catheritize himself every day for a year.  Not something I would enjoy, even though I learned to start an IV on myself (the best way to learn) and had to perform the injection to give blood when the technician was tearing up my arm. After about four tries, I told her to give me the needle or I'd walk. (I'm O+. A near universal donor, which is O-)  They needed the blood, my partner dared me, and they brought a nurse out to watch to make sure I didn't kill myself.  Those were the days as a teen-aged EMT.

Finally, but likely very interesting (n.b.): Fat and cancer. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but take alook at the newest issue of Discover magazine.  It shows a nude, obese man curled up in the corner of a room.  One of the bulleted articles is something like "Fat: there are several types and one is deadly."

1)As for the truck issue...it's not just a man thing, as other people have said.  I have a purse that has been beyond abused and I love it because I got it with my Gap employee discount and it was on clearance, and it holds everything!  But it's less than attractive now, but do I care?  Nope!  It holds everything!  And it goes with everything, so I see no need to go to the trouble and hassle, not to metnion expense, to change purses.  T-Shirts that are stained beyond recognition, jeans, etc, that no longer fit anymore are not ever going to good-will on similar principles.  We all have things like that that we're attached to for sentimental reasons.

2)Regarding Sharnetta...I am late all the time.  Not quite to the degree Sharnetta is, though.  But I am constantly coming in ten minutes late for my first class of the day, or clocking in twenty-minutes late for work. 

I think it sounds more like Sharnetta has anxiety-related issues, especially since she has an almost compulsion to check and re-check. 

But the thing is, if I'm habitually late on the job or to class, it's because I know that there are no real, immediate consequences to being late.  I'm late because NOBODY REALLY CARES that I'm late or calls me on it.  I'm late because I've been taught that it's acceptable behavior.  Sure, there are going to be some long-term consequences when I look for jobs, but I don't think about that when I hit the snooze button one too many times.  Now if my boss or a teacher chewed me out for being late, then of course I'd make sure I'd arrive on time, but otherwise, if I'm going to be there when I'll be there.

It's not because I'm overly egotistical.  If anything, I have low self-esteem issues.  Am I self-centered?   Maybe...but no more than anyone else is.  Honestly, I think that if it were a problem of being self-centered and egotistical, then everyone on the face of the Earth would be chronically late...because let's face it, as much as I wish it weren't, being self-centered and egotistical is a part of human nature.

Not only did I not feel the mass until it was that large, but neither did the surgeon in October of 2005, when I had a benign grown removed from the same breast.  He did a complete physical exam of the breast at the time of the surgery. 

The way my cancer presented was such an unusual case that it was presented at a breast cancer conference shortly after my mastectomy.  The large cancer was DCIS...Ductal Carcinoma InSitu...meaning that the cancer was contained in the milk ducts.  When the mastectomy was done, it was discovered that I also had infiltrative cancer throughout that breast.

It is scary to think that the tumor could get that big before anybody could feel it...I have always been very faithful about doing self exams.  DCIS tumors are soft, and they can go undetected until they are large.

Something else that all women who have had breast cancer should know...If you have had breast cancer, you are four times as likely to develop COLON CANCER.  My doctor sent me for a colonoscopy, and the gastroenterologist found pre-cancerous polyps, that would have become full-blown colon cancer, had I waited until the usual age of 50 to have my first colonoscopy.  (I am 45 years old.)

So, don't wait on those routine tests, ladies.

they have fallen 3 times already and they did a very poor job ( minister J.P Balkenende looks like a grown up Harry Potter, but that's beside my point). He and his ministry have maid the rich richer and the poor poorer. I don't like the way everything is going here. Social security, health care everything is going down the drain. They made healthcare a marketing business while most off the people would like to see more CARE in marketing ( I hope I didn't make to many spelling mistakes, if so forgive me) I'am a little bit lost in translation.

When they fall we would get to vote again, I'am pretty sure the right person for the job would win then. The current people (Goverment) promiss a lot but don't follow through