#CHEMOTHERAPY

[reasonsforhope]

I'm worried about the rising rate of young adults getting cancer.

For what it's worth, we've actually made a shocking amount of progress against cancer - especially the most common cancers like breast cancer, and especially in the past 30 years.

Cancer rates have been falling, often dramatically (x, x, x, x, x, x). One of the best examples it that breast cancer deaths in the United States dropped 58% between 1975 and 2019 (x).

Right now, we're at the beginning of an absolute revolution in cancer care that promises to increase survival rates even further. This revolution has been going on to a lesser degree since the first human genome was successfully sequenced in the early 2000s (and in fact, the first gapless sequencing of a human genome was finally finished just two years ago, in 2022), and to a greater extent since CRISPR DNA-editing technology was first successfully tested in 2013, and since medical digitzation/digital communication and vaccination were massively spurred ahead in 2020, by the COVID pandemic (x, x).

Right now, the results of this revolution are only beginning to trickle out into actual treatments. But I guarantee you, in the next one to three decades, the way we fight cancer will be massively transformed.

We're talking personalized genome sequencing for each person with cancer - not just for early and better detection, but even to figure out what types of treatments will work best. (x, x, x, x)

We're talking using CRISPR-based DNA editing to literally cut cancer-causing mutations out of your DNA, to edit the genes of immune cells to better detect and kill cancer cells, and to kill cancer-causing viruses. (x, x, x, x)

We're talking using CRISPR-based screening to figure out how chemotherapy resistance works, so that we can overcome it - and even weaponize it. (x, x)

We're talking using CRISPR to edit immune cells so that they recognize and target the mutations of a single individual's specific tumor. (x)

We're talking new types of testing that can predict if cancer will return years before it shows up on scans. (x)

We're talking using (non-generative) AI to massively increase the accuracy and earliness of cancer detection - which by the way is already starting to happen, there are several AI-based systems that detect cancer earlier and more accurately than doctors do. (x, x, x, x, x, x)

Also, the more we transition to a green, sustainable, and ethical future, the fewer cancer-causing substances will be in the environment (fossil fuels, oil drilling, and mining are massive sources of carcinogens at every point in the process).

Cancer is awful. That is a massive understatement. But the fight against cancer is one where there are so many reasons for hope.

[ceevee5]

[thepastisalreadywritten]

💙🫶💙

[paullorenz]

After months of health insurance arguments, changing health insurance, and intense scheduling...treatments have begun! We begin with chemo!

[destielmemenews]

“In January, I underwent major abdominal surgery in London and at the time, it was thought that my condition was non-cancerous,” she said in a video announcement.

“The surgery was successful. However, tests after the operation found cancer had been present. My medical team therefore advised that I should undergo a course of preventative chemotherapy and I am now in the early stages of that treatment.”

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[captain-jacks-coat]

ASEXUALS, ASSEMBLE!

And gothic horror fans and aromatics and general aspecs and basically just people who are willing to help out tbh.

So, one of my best friends (who I have talked about before on here, actually) is back in hospital. And it's quite serious this time, because she's going to have to go through chemotherapy. There's a good chance she'll be in hospital over Christmas, too.

I want to do something for her. I bought her a funko pop thing but I want to do something with actual meaning. (I mean yes her Aunt got her this FANTASTIC Christmas card that made me scream with both shock and delight on her behalf bc holy shit but I want to do something from me, too).

I want to make a scrapbook or a notebook or something, of messages and photos and art from all over. I want her to know she is loved by more than just the hospital staff.

She loves Frankenstein, and her absolute favourite artist is Brightgoat. If we could get a message for her, from Brightgoat, that would be incredible and it would get her so, so excited.

If you want to chip in with a message, or with art, or anything you can, everything is appreciated :)

(Btw for those wondering, this is my formerly terminally ill aroace friend who said "The only relationship I will ever have is with my health, and it's a very toxic one")

[angryschnauzer]

Hubby had his final clinic appointment today. I was so fucking anxious, i was sure they would have found regrowth of the brain tumour or that his bloods wouldn't be good enough for the final round of chemo, but i was proven wrong thankfully.

No regrowth. Blood platelets high enough for his final round of chemo. He's been given the all clear to fly so we can look at going on holiday in October to Malta.

Going forwards he will have MRI scans every two to three months for the rest of his life, and there is a 95% chance the cancer will come back at some point in the next five years. But for now, we are in the clear.

I'm not celebrating just yet, but my anxiety has dropped considerably.

[seekingskywhales]

All done treatment!!!!!!

HUMANITY RESTORED in the biggest way!!!!!

[butterflyinthewell]

🆘 My irl best friend needs help. 🆘

I’ve been friends with Elizabeth since we were 10.

She is currently fighting ovarian cancer and the medical bills are piling up.

Late in June her life turned upside down with a full hysterectomy and a bunch of health problems after. She lives in Las Vegas and can’t afford to buy a car. She travels to medical appointments by Lyft, which is eating into her wallet. Before cancer she was employed and active, and now she had to give up her job because she can barely walk across her house without pain or shortness of breath. She’s waiting on disability, but it’s taking forever and her husband’s salary is barely enough to survive on.

If she can’t go to appointments, she can’t get her chemo and imaging done. Trying to walk there results in her developing ascites and she ends up hospitalized to get it drained. It’s very painful for her.

Can you PLEASE help? Any amount is helpful. I’ve been begging on her behalf on Twitter for weeks and there’s barely anything, so I hope to get something here.

Here’s photos of us back when I visited her in 2021. (I visited her again in July 2024, but she was sick and had to be in the hospital, and I didn’t want to take pictures of her sick and miserable.)

Please reblog! This will get eaten out of tags because of the link, and I need eyes on this.

https://giveahand.com/fundraiser/medical-billsbills

[mindblowingscience]

Cancer drug resistance remains a leading reason why treatments for specific cancers eventually do not work. A team of Stony Brook University researchers led by Gábor Balázsi have been testing drug resistance with mammalian cell lines. Their latest investigation reveals that taking a part of a DNA amplification from a cell, which causes resistance, and placing it back in, actually stops the drug resistance. This finding, published in PNAS, could lead to additional treatment methods in the attempt to stop chemotherapy drug resistance.

Continue Reading.

[yappleart]

This month I am officially 10 years off chemo for my acute leaukemia.

As grateful as I am to have survived with the amazing help of nurses and doctors who I am eternally thankful for being a childhood cancer survivor has come with its various challenges but they seem to grow less significant as I grow and 10 years later I am much more knowledgeable about how my cancer has affected me and how to deal with this although I still have a long way to go.

With the release of deadpool 3 which I am VERY hyped for I thought a tribute to the #fuckcancer pink suit that helped raise money for the cause would be suitable (haha do you get it) and who doesn’t like pink????

I am extremely privileged to have had this treatment so I want to use this post as a platform to share some gofundme links to families and people suffering from the genocide in Palestine who due to the violence by Israel cannot access medical care I hope you take the time to read their stories and donate if you can.

Thank you 🎗️

[hannahcrazyhawk]

Autoimmune diseases, “Here, we got you this fever.”

Me: “Why!”

Autoimmune diseases, “Just because.”

[thepastisalreadywritten]

By Allison Pearson

23 March 2024

OH, NO. No. A sense that something was not right, that our wonderful Princess was perhaps in more trouble than we’d been told, was confirmed at 6pm on Friday with an unprecedented TV address that dealt a blow to the nation’s solar plexus.

Some will simply have been stunned by the news, hardly able to comprehend it (what, cancer twice in the Royal family within two months? But she’s so young).

Others will have been in tears, as I was, watching our Princess of Wales, parchment-pale, clearly fragile yet valiantly composing herself to record a message in that crystal-clear voice, reassuring us that, although it had been “an incredibly tough couple of months for our entire family,” she would be OK, given enough time, space and privacy.

One friend who heard it on the car radio pulled over to the side of the road and sobbed. “I am just so upset,” she texted.

Another confessed she was relieved that the Waleses hadn’t separated – one of the wilder rumours that had been flying around since the Princess of Wales was pictured in that photoshopped, too-smiley Mother’s Day picture without her wedding rings.

“For the backbone of Britain, we need those two to be together and happily married,” said my friend. So true.

William ’n’ Kate, Kate ’n’ William, a couple for almost the whole of their adult lives, one unimaginable without the other.

Our monarchy is assured as long as there is them (the Waleses will celebrate their thirteenth wedding anniversary on 29th April, six days after little Louis turns six).

Suddenly, with this announcement, we are reminded that they are only human too, vulnerable at times, and Britain is badly shaken.

As she finished her statement, the ramifications started to sink in. Prince William has to deal with a father and a wife with cancer at the same time.

There are haunting echoes of Diana, too, another beloved princess whose personal challenges played out so publicly.

Poor William must feel like there are snipers in the garden taking aim at his family.

You could tell the children were uppermost in her mind, just as they are for any parent who is told they have cancer.

George, Charlotte and Louis, she spoke their names aloud, her darlings. You know, I think they were the real reason she steeled herself to do it.

To sit there on that wooden bench with spring bursting out behind her. Daffodils on a grassy bank, trees in blossom – a cruelly lovely backdrop for such sad tidings.

How simply dressed she was in a matelot jumper and jeans, stripped of finery and clothed, instead, in a becoming humility, her beauty thrown into sharp relief by the strain on her face.

A 42-year-old who is uniquely privileged yet now confronts every woman’s frightening brush with mortality.

Her statement was carefully timed to coincide with the start of the school Easter holidays so the children could be safe at home and wouldn’t have to endure whispers in class about Mummy’s illness.

(Sparing them the agonies of embarrassment young William and Harry suffered at boarding school when Charles and Diana were getting divorced.)

It’s not easy to protect your children when their grandfather is the King and their father his heir.

The Prince and Princess of Wales have always been concerned to make things as normal, as Middleton, as possible, for their young family; this is their toughest test yet.

Was there more than a hint of rebuke in the Princess’s carefully measured words for a media that really has shown neither patience nor “understanding” since she disappeared from public view to have abdominal surgery?

She could be forgiven for being furious. (Believe me, many of us are furious on her behalf.)

“William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family,” she said pointedly.

“As you can imagine, this has taken time. It has taken me time to recover from major surgery in order to start my treatment.

But, most importantly, it has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them, and to reassure them that I am going to be OK.”

“Back off,” she was saying in the politest possible way, “leave me and my kids alone.”

Of course, she needed time to come to terms with the shattering blow of having a life-threatening illness and three children under 10. Every mother’s nightmare.

But time is one thing the vultures and conspiracy theorists were not prepared to give her.

In the vacuum Kensington Palace foolishly allowed to develop, the vilest rumours flourished.

Had she undergone cosmetic surgery? Wasn’t she just slacking? Why wasn’t William taking up more duties to relieve his sick father?

Had Catherine left William? Was it a lookalike pictured with William at a Windsor farm shop?

The gossip went global, causing universal hysteria.

Imagine feeling as sick and scared as the Princess must have done, yet being under pressure to show yourself in order to disprove the lies and appease the baying online mob. It’s barbaric.

I hope those who made such disgusting comments are burning with shame today now that we know the reason she hid away.

It wasn’t only ghouls with a conscience bypass who were trying to fill the gaps in the story.

Theories also came from people who adore the Royal family and were deeply worried for the absent Princess. We love and respect her so much.

Incredibly, in a poll earlier this month, the recuperating Princess still managed to emerge as the most popular royal, narrowly ahead of her husband.

Despite the slurry of accusations – not least the appalling claim in an early draft of a book by Omid Scobie (media snitch), that she was one of the two alleged “royal racists” who speculated on the baby’s likely skin colour – their figures are broadly unchanged since a previous poll in 2023.

Never Put a Foot Wrong is said so often it’s practically the definition of her.

Turns out there may be stresses and strains to appearing always in control, to aiming for perfection, that can eat away at a sensitive person not born to be royal.

Catherine says her job brings her joy; it must also have caused worry (such remorseless spotlight scrutiny).

We should reflect on that, I think. On what it’s reasonable to expect from one human being who expects so much of herself.

How the Princess came to win such a large place in British people’s hearts is better than any fairy tale.

Bullied at school, the quiet, sporty brunette was famous for her record-breaking high jump and tenacious character.

She had blossomed by the time she met William in their first term at St Andrew’s.

At 29, when they finally exchanged vows in Westminster Abbey, she was the first royal bride to have a university degree; the first to have lived with her husband before marriage; the first to be raised in a house that had a street number instead of a fancy name and a moat with swans.

As second in line to the throne, William was expected to pick his princess from a select group of well-bred young fillies.

Hot favourites included Davina Duckworth-Chad and one Isabella Amaryllis Charlotte Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe.

Enough hyphens to make plain Catherine Middleton of Bucklebury, Berkshire, feel a little inadequate, you might think.

Except that, when a friend at university told Catherine how lucky she was to be going out with Prince William, a smiling Catherine replied: “He’s lucky to have me.”

The years have proved her right, haven’t they?

The death of Diana left William a damaged, stubborn and angry young man, acutely aware he was a prisoner of fate and railing at the media who pursued his mother.

Catherine has calmed him, rebuilding trust while providing the regular family life he had never known.

She has grown brilliantly into the role and the Waleses are a formidable team, lighting up any event they enter.

Now, it is his turn to soothe and calm her, although he must be deeply worried.

“Having William by my side is a great source of comfort and reassurance too, as is the love, support and kindness that has been shown by so many of you. It means so much to us both,” she said.

The King was right to salute his daughter-in-law for her courage. Imagine what it takes to first tell your small children you have cancer and then tell the whole world.

She did it so naturally, so sweetly, with such great empathy for others with that cruel disease that no one could possibly guess what it cost her. But it cost her.

She has told George, Charlotte and Louis that Mummy is well, and getting better, but the only way she will make a full recovery is if she’s left alone as she completes her treatment.

Will the vultures listen? Will they give her the time she needs or go back pecking for more?

Millions of us are praying for the return to health of our wonderful Princess of Wales. She has all our support and love.

A Britain without her is unthinkable, unbearable. Take your time, Princess, take your time.

💙🌹💙

[rahuratna]

Songbirds

TW: illness, terminal illness, death.

Writing has always been a way to help me cope with turmoil. Today, it has taken on quite the task; today is a very heavy day.

Today is the anniversary of my friend's passing.

I met her at my first chemo infusion. It was more than nerve-wracking. When I walked into the treatment room, I saw the other patients present, some of them so weak, so frail, one step away from the spectre that had been scraping its fingernails over my mind since my diagnosis. I saw her there, too. I nearly walked out, right then and there.

I didn't.

The woman, who later became my friend, had such kind eyes, open and friendly. I avoided her gaze. I avoided her on almost every occasion after that. We had the same oncologist, and so, always ended up receiving treatment on the same days.

I couldn't comprehend her. Her case was worse than mine, and yet, she spoke with such lightness, chattered endlessly about the most mundane things, spoke about her future as if it were a certainty.

I was wrapped up in my own misery. I thought that I was being so brave, such a realist, acknowledging that death was never far away. This woman seemed, to me, to be in denial. I wanted no part of that.

As the months went by, I began to see how wrong I was. She spoke to me, prying me gently open, and her words bruised my flesh, yet made me whole. She was brave. She knew full well the severity of her case. And yet, she still laughed. She expressed the wish that we would regain our sense of taste soon (chemo kills the tastebuds). We would look at menus online and talk about how we'd order pizza together, when this nebulous darkness had been pulled back from our lives and we could sit in the sun again.

Another young woman joined our discussions during this time. She was also there for treatment. She was beautiful, so beautiful. I would look at her glossy regrowth of black hair, the red of her lips, the red dot on her forehead, her wide, wide smile, her firm stride even when pain flared through her spine, and I felt hope. Such small, daring, brave hope.

My friends, as I came to call them, made my chemo sessions bearable. More than that, they made me feel warm, welcome, as if treatment was an ordeal shared among weary travelers at a sputtering campfire.

Of our trio, I am the only one still alive.

Today, I ordered a good meal and allowed each distinct flavour to permeate my recovered taste buds. I remembered every meaningless detail of my friend's nephew's kindergarten. I remembered the pain behind my other friend's red-lipped smile, her loneliness, her courage.

My friends are like songbirds, startled by my presence in the wild, calling out as they fly beyond my reach. I know I should say goodbye, that I should make my peace. And yet, no matter how far they fly, I can always see them, from the corner of my eye. I can hear their voices, feel the warmth of their fingers on my once-bare scalp.

My songbirds have left me behind, possibly for brighter shores. Maybe, through our tenuous connection, we'll walk together someday, in the sun.

[speedyz3]

Storm clouds on the move at Antelope Island. I shot this earlier this month and kind of filed it away. This reminds me of how my brain feels since my last chemotherapy treatment. It’s a little tough to focus and concentrate. My oncologist calls it chemo brain. The plus side is it doesn’t affect my nap schedule.

[eretzyisrael]

Good News From Israel

Israel's Good News Newsletter to 14th Apr 24

Read More: Good News From Israel

In the 14th Apr 24 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

A music graduate from Oxford Uni is now an agronomist rebuilding Israeli farms.

A revolutionary Israeli alternative to antibiotics has begun human trials.

Jews hand out dates to Muslim worshippers at the end of Ramadan fasting.

Israelis fly out to help victims of Taiwan’s earthquake.

An invitation to see some “cool” Israeli climate technology.

Commercial organizations can help make Aliyah much easier.

Israeli sporting stars are truly flying the flag.

Two current Jewish Presidents helped write a Torah scroll for Peace.

As you probably know, Israel and its allies have just defended the Jewish State from hundreds of drones and missiles launched by Iran.  The good news is that there were no Israeli fatalities and almost all of the projectiles were intercepted.  This newsletter was compiled before the news of that attack.