Curing cancer

The outlook, after so many years, so much money into research, is still very bleak. Basically, if you have metastatic cancer you will always lose the race.

....................................................................................

Yet the death rate for cancer, adjusted for the size and age of the population, dropped only 5 percent from 1950 to 2005. In contrast, the death rate for heart disease dropped 64 percent in that time, and for flu and pneumonia, it fell 58 percent.

Still, the perception, fed by the medical profession and its marketers, and by popular sentiment, is that cancer can almost always be prevented. If that fails, it can usually be treated, even beaten.

The good news is that many whose cancer has not spread do well, as they have in the past. In some cases, like early breast cancer, drugs introduced in the past decade have made an already good prognosis even better. And a few rare cancers, like chronic myeloid leukemia, can be controlled for years with new drugs. Cancer treatments today tend to be less harsh. Surgery is less disfiguring, chemotherapy less disabling.

But difficulties arise when cancer spreads, and, often, it has by the time of diagnosis. That is true for the most common cancers as well as rarer ones.

With breast cancer, for example, only 20 percent with metastatic disease — cancer that has spread outside the breast, like to bones, brain, lungs or liver — live five years or more, barely changed since the war on cancer began.

With colorectal cancer, only 10 percent with metastatic disease survive five years. That number, too, has hardly changed over the past four decades. The number has long been about 30 percent for metastatic prostate cancer, and in the single digits for lung cancer.

As for prevention, progress has been agonizingly slow. Only a very few things — stopping smoking, for example — make a difference. And despite marketing claims to the contrary, rigorous studies of prevention methods like high-fiber or low-fat diets, or vitamins or selenium, have failed to find an effect.

....................................................................................

And for all the money poured into cancer research, there has never been enough for innovative studies, the kind that can fundamentally change the way scientists understand cancer or doctors treat it. Such studies are risky, less likely to work than ones that are more incremental. The result is that, with limited money, innovative projects often lose out to more reliably successful projects that aim to tweak treatments, perhaps extending life by only weeks.

“Actually, that is the biggest threat,” said Dr. Robert C. Young, chancellor of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “Every organization says, ‘Oh, we want to fund high-risk research.’ And I think they mean it. But as a matter of fact, they don’t do it.”

....................................................................................

Yet the grim facts about cancer can be lost among the positive messages from the news media, advocacy groups and medical centers, and even labels on foods and supplements, hinting that they can fight or prevent cancer. The words tend to be carefully couched, but their impression is unmistakable and welcomed: cancer is preventable if you just eat right and exercise. If you are screened regularly, cancers can be caught early and almost certainly will be cured. If by some awful luck, your cancer is potentially deadly, miraculous new treatments and more in the pipeline could cure you or turn your cancer into a manageable disease.

Unfortunately, as many with cancer have learned, the picture is not always so glowing.

....................................................................................

It turns out that, with few exceptions, mostly childhood cancers and testicular cancer, there is no cure once a cancer has spread. The best that can be done is to keep it at bay for a while.

Source
....................................................................................

Oh Dolly.

There are no words to describe the void you leave behind.




The world is suddenly much colder.

Fucking cancer. Fucking cancer!

Corry died this past wednesday

Breast cancer. At age 50, my age.

Far too young, it's absolutely obscene.
Mother of two young boys.

I first met Corry in 1975. I was 17, in the Netherlands for the first time to meet up with my family. My aunt was involved in some youth activity group and took me along for movie night. They were showing Easy Rider and that's where I met Corry for the first time. The movie blew my mind, little dumb girl from the sticks in South Africa. Corry blew my mind too, beautiful, blonde, so much wiser to the world than I was, she knew exactly what she wanted: to become a hairdresser.

And she did, too! And married a firefighter, and had two gorgeous kids. We were not close friends but we kept in touch all these years. She often did my hair and was possibly the best sales person I have ever met, selling me skin care products I did not really need. And she was right too, once I tried it, I loved it and am still using it! Over these 30-some years I've known her, I always admired her spunk and really liked the person she was.

She will be so very missed by all who knew her.

Hindu funeral

Lots of chanting and singing in languages I don't understand.
Many walks past the open coffin to say goodbye to her.
That's not her lying there, it does not look one bit like her.
A sense of community and family... two evenings in a row, I came to join these rituals.

Tonight, everyone who walked past the coffin got a handful of flower petals and dried herbs, which we let fall around her face. Her husband's face and head was shaved, aside from one small strip of hair on the back of the head. He was dressed all in white. The children were perfectly turned out: the boy in a suit, the girl in a pretty dress and her long hair in two thick braids. Seven years old.
So many people there with long black hair covered with beautiful delicate white lace. So tiny and delicate amongst the very tall Dutch.

Her brothers sang and chanted prayers for almost an hour without stopping as the endless line walked by the coffin. Then, hands together, bow towards the husband standing behind the coffin with fidgety kids, bored of standing still for so long.

Lil was cremated tonight.
We all said our goodbyes.
It was sad and quite beautiful.