The new blog title is a better reflection of what I want to accomplish with this blog. I'm also going to create a Facebook account that links to this as well. For now though, I'm going to keep the address. It's easy to remember and anyone can go to it to find out what it means! http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions
I haven’t talked about STAR TREK yet, which isn’t like me at all!
ST was my favorite TV show growing up, as an adult and now as an “old guy”. During the opening week of the STAR TREK 2009 reboot, my dad (who introduced me to STAR TREK), me (a total ST fan) and my son (who grew up with ST and at whom the new movie was targeted) – went to see it. None of the wonder was gone and I love the NEW as much as all of the old.
At any rate, it got me to thinking about a scene from STAR TREK IV: The Voyage Home in which an elderly woman is laying on a hospital cot waiting to go in for dialysis:
McCoy: [McCoy, masked and in surgical garb, passes an elderly woman groaning on a gurney in the hallway] What's the matter with you?
Elderly patient: [weakly] Kidney [pause] dialysis.
McCoy: [geniunely surprised] Dialysis?[musing to himself] What is this, the Dark Ages? [He turns back to the patient and hands her a large white pill] Here, [pause] you swallow that, and if you have any more problems, just call me! [He pats her cheek and leaves]
…a few moments later…
Elderly patient: [the dialysis patient is being wheeled down the hall after being given the pill by McCoy] [joyfully] The doctor gave me a pill, and I grew a new kidney!
It made me wonder for two reasons. The first was that while today breast cancer survival rates are as high as 98% (for early detection and treatment), at one time tumors could only be detected when they could actually be felt – and then the ONLY treatment was radical mastectomy which, in the late 19th Century removed not only breast tissue but muscles and all lymph nodes as well. If a woman survived that, she was profoundly weakened and handicapped for the rest of her life.
The introduction of modified mastectomies (1950s), mammogram advances (starting in 1967), ultrasound (late 1970s), followed by MRIs, digital mammography, 3D mammography and increasingly refined chemotherapy (introduced in the 1940s), radiation (early 20th Century) and lumpectomies combined with radiation therapy (1970s) and most recently, hormonal treatment and genetic testing improved treatment – and subsequently survival rates.
The second reason is that I was wondering where the research seems to be pointing. I’m going to delve into the history of breast cancer later, let me just say that while it still terrifies me even now; I do have a daughter and hold VERY high hopes that either her or her daughter will someday be able to pop a pill and cry out, “The doctor gave me a pill and I’m cured of breast cancer!”
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