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PearlWatson said:
Highly inappropriate:

early-bird-gets-the-breast-cancer-shirt-L-AvO6TH.jpeg
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Cancer, particularly breast cancer in women, evokes macabre humor. But let's get one thing clear here, OK? Even humor like this has a lot of psychological power that can and does lift the spirits of the women who are living in open defiance of the importance of breasts in the grand scheme of things.

So I'm calling you out on this OB-ish moralizing that just doesn't even matter on the scale of life and death. This particular Tee sends a message to the girls who might be too reluctant to take the steps they should to save their lives.

uhhhmmmm. . . . . perhaps just as importantly. . . . it sends a message to the boys who might be the first to notice a lump. . . . . and might care enough to "do the right thing" and encourage the girl to go see the doctor. . . .

seriously, I just won't object to any angle that might get the message across. . . .
 
babe said:
@Log

I'm a perfect storm of contradictions. . . . .

I got a bad taste about pharmaceuticals back in the days when I aspired to become a medicinal chemist and even helped in some minor ways with the coming forth of some of our anti-cancer "chemo" agents in use today, like 5-Fluorouracil. Yep, I washed the flasks that stuff was invented in. In the process of time, falling asleep with the Merck Index under my chin, I woke up realizing that every chemical known to man has been tried as an anti-cancer agent, and all have worked somehow. . . . .

Because the underlying logic of trying to poison cancer cells, and relying on their higher metabolism needs to trick the cancer into hogging the poison, does form a logical basis for action. . . . and any poison will work. . . . .

The so-called "natural remedies" are hyped as having "no toxins" and "no poisons", a sort of nonsense. . . . because every chemical substance will a some level constitute a poison just as well. . . . even water has an LD50 level where half of the subjects so treated will die. . . .

The quips of the lab where I worked included the maxim "Even water will kill you", and "What we want is a magic bullet".

Proton therapy to my mind is the best sort of treatment. As I understand it, it will "cook" the tissue where multiple beams cross paths, and leave a minimal amount of damage in the tissue areas where single beams pass.

I remain principally impressed, however, with our own immune systems and our own "repair" capacities, as being the systems which will ultimately solve the problems of treating cancers of all kinds. This is what a lot of homeopathic rhetoric hypes, but without an intelligent basis. . . .
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Indeed the top "natural" remedy I looked into was laetrile and it metabolizes into cyanide in the body, from what I understand. Poisons work, they also are insanely hard on the body in general. I received permanent colon damage (my body couldn't metabolize the ifosfamide, and after 2 doses with 4 weeks in between and after to clear my body of toxic levels of the stuff they stopped giving it to me) and other issues including damage to arteries and my heart, as well as minor tonal hearing loss and permanent chronic pain from the spine surgeries (come on medicinal mary jane! =) but at least I am still here.

And the radiation treatment you described is called "Cyberknife" and involves intersecting beams of normal radiation to focus the intensity on the tumor and minimize disruption to surrounding tissue. In proton therapy they actually use a particle accelerator to propel protons stripped from hydrogen atoms into your body. They can tailor it to the correct depth, and 3 dimensional area of the tumor and can focus it so tightly that they actually treated the dura of my spinal cord directly since my tumor intersected into my spine. Normal radiation, and even cyberknife, would not have been an option for me due to the proximity to the spinal cord, but with proton therapy they could hit every part of the surgical resection. I truly believe that is why I am alive today. One of the good things that came from work like the Manhattan Project.

Here is the website of the facility in which I was treated if anyone is interested:

https://www.protons.com/proton-therapy/index.page

Really amazing stuff. Loma Linda was one of the first facilities with the ability to change the trajectory of the proton beam and focus it the way they do. There have been treatment facilities around since the 50's, but they had fixed stationary beams and the patient had to be repositioned for treatment which limited the effectiveness. When I was there undergoing treatment they were treating an eye tumor in a year old baby, and were able to save the child's sight, where normal treatment would have been to remove the eye entirely. Amazing, or even, miraculous?
 
Long Beach

So I just got back from California. . . . saw some areas I've just not gone through before. . . .

Long Beach.

We took the two-hour harbor ride, and saw a lot of dolphins and even a whale. . . . well, sortof. . . . we saw some "blows" pretty close by. But mostly it was just great to get offshore for a while, and see the place from "out there". We also went to Laguna Beach, Mission Viejo, and some nearby 'burbs. Stayed in Irvine, in the research park. . . .
 
LogGrad98 said:
Indeed the top "natural" remedy I looked into was laetrile and it metabolizes into cyanide in the body, from what I understand. Poisons work, they also are insanely hard on the body in general. I received permanent colon damage (my body couldn't metabolize the ifosfamide, and after 2 doses with 4 weeks in between and after to clear my body of toxic levels of the stuff they stopped giving it to me) and other issues including damage to arteries and my heart, as well as minor tonal hearing loss and permanent chronic pain from the spine surgeries (come on medicinal mary jane! =) but at least I am still here.

And the radiation treatment you described is called "Cyberknife" and involves intersecting beams of normal radiation to focus the intensity on the tumor and minimize disruption to surrounding tissue. In proton therapy they actually use a particle accelerator to propel protons stripped from hydrogen atoms into your body. They can tailor it to the correct depth, and 3 dimensional area of the tumor and can focus it so tightly that they actually treated the dura of my spinal cord directly since my tumor intersected into my spine. Normal radiation, and even cyberknife, would not have been an option for me due to the proximity to the spinal cord, but with proton therapy they could hit every part of the surgical resection. I truly believe that is why I am alive today. One of the good things that came from work like the Manhattan Project.

Here is the website of the facility in which I was treated if anyone is interested:

https://www.protons.com/proton-therapy/index.page

Really amazing stuff. Loma Linda was one of the first facilities with the ability to change the trajectory of the proton beam and focus it the way they do. There have been treatment facilities around since the 50's, but they had fixed stationary beams and the patient had to be repositioned for treatment which limited the effectiveness. When I was there undergoing treatment they were treating an eye tumor in a year old baby, and were able to save the child's sight, where normal treatment would have been to remove the eye entirely. Amazing, or even, miraculous?
Click to expand...

this is on the level of me being a grammar cop in here, but I'm yielding to an OCD about scientific fact consistent with my homeschooling my science kids. . . . .

The hydrogen atom consists of a proton and an electron. . . . well, not complicating the discussion with isotope issues, at least. It's the electron that you strip away. . . . . leaving the proton. Particle accelerators can use magnetic/electrical forces to accelerate the proton, which acquires kinetic energy. At sufficient speeds a proton is a penetrating "radiation". I don't know exactly how all this is done, just the principles used, generally speaking. A charged particle in an electric/magnetic field can be made to follow a curved path if necessary by applying the right kind of "field" to the path.

fascinating to hear the description of someone who has actually gone through this treatment. . . .
 
laetrile. . . .

well, in my opinion. . . . the site where the cyanide is evolved. . . . . is probably not going to be a very "accurate' sort of "bullet".

The primary mode of action for cyanides is on the hemoglobin in the blood, negatively affecting the oxygen-transporting capacity of hemoglobin. With deficient oxygen, the brain is first affected and you go unconscious. Then without the brain function, you just die. Well, in effect, you are "smothered" with a "chemical blanket", not a lot differently than carbon monoxide or simple lack of air.

If laetrile is broken down in a cancer cell, it would be important to know how that cyanide reacts with essential proteins inside the cell, inside the cancer cell. . . . and I would expect it to always be a concern about the effects on hemoglobin and oxygen capacity in the blood.
 
babe said:
this is on the level of me being a grammar cop in here, but I'm yielding to an OCD about scientific fact consistent with my homeschooling my science kids. . . . .

The hydrogen atom consists of a proton and an electron. . . . well, not complicating the discussion with isotope issues, at least. It's the electron that you strip away. . . . . leaving the proton. Particle accelerators can use magnetic/electrical forces to accelerate the proton, which acquires kinetic energy. At sufficient speeds a proton is a penetrating "radiation". I don't know exactly how all this is done, just the principles used, generally speaking. A charged particle in an electric/magnetic field can be made to follow a curved path if necessary by applying the right kind of "field" to the path.

fascinating to hear the description of someone who has actually gone through this treatment. . . .
Click to expand...

The way it was explained to me was that they can control the speed of the protons as they enter your body. As they approach a certain speed, i.e. slow down, they start to attract electrons to replace the ones stripped from them (good call, bad wording on my part), this causes the surrounding tissue to give up electrons and lose their structure from the atomic level, and the tumor breaks down. They do all sorts of scans and tests to determine the depth the protons need to start doing their work, and where they would "peter out" so to speak, and they build a block of wax infused with a material (can't remember what is was" that regulates the point at which the protons slow down enough to do their work. This is a hollowed out block that has a topographical 3D map, so to speak, of the tumor site, and the proton beam is fed through this block to tailor the shape and depth of the treatment. Obviously some protons go rogue and such and so you get some minor impact to tissues on the way in, and on the way out, but that is drastically reduced compared to the damage caused from the surface with regular radiation treatment.

For proton therapy they have to ensure you are always in the correct alignment, so I got a tiny tattoo behind my ear and on my neck which they use with lasers to line you up. They also made a mold of my body, lying on my back, and made a facemask out of heat-sensitive plastic that got bolted down over my head to align everything. Each treatment took about 15 minutes and I got 5 per week for 8 weeks. The only side effect I noticed was some trouble swallowing due to the proximity of my throat to the treatment zone, and the angle they had to use with the machine to reach the tumor site, but that went away after about 2 weeks and didn't bother me after.

The other cool thing about it is that the facility, at least the treatment center, is about 5 stories under ground. To be able to move the beam and aim it they need an apparatus with a fairly large circumference to be able to guide the beam, since they can't just bend it or reflect it off a mirror or something. So they had a gantry that was huge, and mostly buried underground. If I remember correctly they had 3 treatment gantries tied into the main accelerator.

More info from their site:

https://www.llu.edu/central/info/legacy/chapter5.page

The accelerator itself, weighing 50 tons, is a ring of eight electromagnets, 60 feet in circumference and 20 feet in diameter. These electromagnets bend and focus the beam around a closed path within a vacuum tube. Protons are accelerated up to half the speed of light by applying a radio-frequency voltage in synchronization with the circulating beam. Thus the machine is called a "synchrotron." An extraction system removes protons as needed and carries them into the beam-transport system. The beam-transport system takes the "Beam of Hope" into one of five rooms: three having three-story-high rotating gantries, designed to aim the beam at the patient from any angle; one containing two fixed, horizontal beams; and a calibration/research room with three beams.
Click to expand...

So yeah, 3 rooms with gantries to aim the beam. All in all it was a pretty wild experience to end a year in hell, so to speak.

As a side note, you know one of the worst things about cancer treatment? Boredom.
 
babe said:
Cancer, particularly breast cancer in women, evokes macabre humor. But let's get one thing clear here, OK? Even humor like this has a lot of psychological power that can and does lift the spirits of the women who are living in open defiance of the importance of breasts in the grand scheme of things.

So I'm calling you out on this OB-ish moralizing that just doesn't even matter on the scale of life and death. This particular Tee sends a message to the girls who might be too reluctant to take the steps they should to save their lives.

uhhhmmmm. . . . . perhaps just as importantly. . . . it sends a message to the boys who might be the first to notice a lump. . . . . and might care enough to "do the right thing" and encourage the girl to go see the doctor. . . .

seriously, I just won't object to any angle that might get the message across. . . .
Click to expand...

Thanks for the spank but it was unnecessary.

I thought you knew me better than that, but then again it was partly said as a buffer for any possible offense to you.
 
LogGrad98 said:
The way it was explained to me was that they can control the speed of the protons as they enter your body. As they approach a certain speed, i.e. slow down, they start to attract electrons to replace the ones stripped from them (good call, bad wording on my part), this causes the surrounding tissue to give up electrons and lose their structure from the atomic level, and the tumor breaks down. They do all sorts of scans and tests to determine the depth the protons need to start doing their work, and where they would "peter out" so to speak, and they build a block of wax infused with a material (can't remember what is was" that regulates the point at which the protons slow down enough to do their work. This is a hollowed out block that has a topographical 3D map, so to speak, of the tumor site, and the proton beam is fed through this block to tailor the shape and depth of the treatment. Obviously some protons go rogue and such and so you get some minor impact to tissues on the way in, and on the way out, but that is drastically reduced compared to the damage caused from the surface with regular radiation treatment.

For proton therapy they have to ensure you are always in the correct alignment, so I got a tiny tattoo behind my ear and on my neck which they use with lasers to line you up. They also made a mold of my body, lying on my back, and made a facemask out of heat-sensitive plastic that got bolted down over my head to align everything. Each treatment took about 15 minutes and I got 5 per week for 8 weeks. The only side effect I noticed was some trouble swallowing due to the proximity of my throat to the treatment zone, and the angle they had to use with the machine to reach the tumor site, but that went away after about 2 weeks and didn't bother me after.

The other cool thing about it is that the facility, at least the treatment center, is about 5 stories under ground. To be able to move the beam and aim it they need an apparatus with a fairly large circumference to be able to guide the beam, since they can't just bend it or reflect it off a mirror or something. So they had a gantry that was huge, and mostly buried underground. If I remember correctly they had 3 treatment gantries tied into the main accelerator.

More info from their site:

https://www.llu.edu/central/info/legacy/chapter5.page



So yeah, 3 rooms with gantries to aim the beam. All in all it was a pretty wild experience to end a year in hell, so to speak.

As a side note, you know one of the worst things about cancer treatment? Boredom.
Click to expand...

thanks for this whole explanation. Lots of stuff here I didn't know. . . .

and yah, any time you're time is blocked up and taken out of your control, and you're mostly unable to do anything you want has just got to be "Boredom".
 
babe said:
men and women are not "equal" in the sense of being "equivalent" or identical. Practically every cell in the human body is impacted with the instructions inherent in the hormonal levels of estrogen and testosterone, with their manifold cascading biochemical ramifications. Men and women are different, that's the long and the short of it.

The male brain is different, and it suits having a different role in an interdependent schema. A woman who wants to "be equal" is actually devaluing herself, because it is her differing qualities and capacities that enhance her value. Similarly, a man who wants to be "effeminate" is devaluing himself by not caring to live out the role which maleness is better suited for. . . . .
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Exceptionally said.

I would add that why would a woman want to be merely "equal" when she previously held a place of honor. That's like a hero joining the criminal ranks for equality sake.
 
I came upon some quotes to share:

I do not think of all the misery, but of the glory that remains. Go outside into the fields, nature and the sun, go out and seek happiness in yourself and in God. Think of the beauty that again and again discharges itself within and without you and be happy. ~ Ann Frank
 
O Lord, remember not only the men and woman of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all of the suffering they have inflicted upon us:

Instead remember the fruits we have borne because of this suffering—our fellowship, our loyalty to one another, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown from this trouble.

When our persecutors come to be judged by you, let all of these fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness.

(Found in the clothing of a dead child at Ravensbruck concentration camp.)
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It is hard to get on board with this magnitude of forgiveness...I just can't fathom it.
 
To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and be transformed is to be a pilgrim. ~Mark Nepo
 
PearlWatson said:
th
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well. . . . .

Jesus does have a body. . . . . he was resurrected according to the scripture, and gave proofs that he was not just a spirit. Jehovah also has a body, according to Moses' accounts. . . . .

But beyond that, there is need for us to step up and serve in the name of God, Jesus, or whoever. . . . . So this is something even I should not quibble about, any more than I'd quibble about a tee that would be mistaken by a true baseball fan as meaning "watch out for the runner on first".

uhhhhhhh huummmmmmm.
 
Reason is the organ of truth and imagination the organ of meaning. ~ C.S. Lewis

(Edit) Extended version: “For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.”
 
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