Breast Cancer Complacency: The Shock of Being a Tether Ball

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

“And how’s your wife doing?”

“What? Fine. Why?” (My response after a momentary stupid look.)

“Well, with her breast cancer and everything. How’s she doing?”

Source: A recent conversation with someone I don’t talk

with much anymore because I moved my position.

As I shared above, my wife’s breast cancer odyssey has become something less than a moment-by-moment struggle. But then, I’m only speaking for myself. While she is my “beautiful woman. My life partner, my one coquette, the answer to my love's duet,” (Prince Edward, “Enchanted” (2007)), I can ONLY imagine what she feels on a daily basis. Because she doesn’t have regular chemo anymore; doesn’t have tubes in the thoracic cavity anymore; isn’t bald anymore; we don’t go to weekly doctor checkups...I sometimes forget that her body was abused by cells whose division mechanism was completely overridden by something we don’t understand completely yet.

I forget.

My bad, but I do because breast cancer didn’t invade ME.

I am an observer and it’s easy for me to forget that the war is not over. There are tens of thousands of others who found out yesterday…today…or will find out tomorrow that they have some stage of breast cancer.

I’m out acting like I was the center of the world and everything else revolves around me, when all of a sudden, I find out that I’m a TETHERBALL in a professional tournament (BTW – there’s no such thing as Olympic or professional tetherball, there IS a World Tetherball Association (http://worldtetherballassociation.com/).

I do, in fact spin around in my everyday life, oblivious to the fact that my wife suffered – and perhaps suffers still – from a monstrous disease fully as horrible as anything that has attacked Humanity since the dawn of time. I don’t think about it.

Then someone asks me how she’s doing and BAM!, it’s like the opposing team hits the tetherball. I’m traveling in the other direction, blithely ignoring the challenges and pain and fear that seemed to overwhelm me just a few months ago.

How can I BE that obtuse? How can I remain evermindful? How can I be so uncaring? How can I continue to support my wife in the lifestyle that, up until two years ago, only contained the words “breast cancer” in an abstract, tongue-clicking sort of way? I even write this blog once a week and I FORGET!

That translates into the tough question for me – how can OTHERS remain aware of breast cancer when I forget all the time?

What can I do to help others remain mindful that every three minutes, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer?

First of all, I need to be continually aware that breast cancer is STILL an issue for my wife, as well as for every woman alive on Earth today. Breast cancer is not an AMERICAN issue. It’s not a black issue or an Hispanic issue or an Kenyan issue or a British issue – it is a Human issue and it is a disease that could potentially strike HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE!

Now what? I get to work:

1) I remain mindful

2) I remind others

3) I keep blogging

4) I offer a hand and shoulder to any man reading this who feels like he’s a tetherball in the deadly game of breast cancer.

All right. List written. Now for the rest of the plan!

Image: http://cdn.wl.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Olympic-Tetherball.jpg

Breast Cancer Is Like Weather...

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

I’d started this out with the observation that my wife’s experience with breast cancer has been one of constant adjustment:

…adjusting to life without breasts – and STILL getting reminders from the doctor’s office to come in for her annual breast checkup...I’m NOT kidding, she finally had to call the clinic to ASK them to take her off the “reminder” list.

…changing medication, feeling better…and then feeling WORSE.

…asking for an “adult-sized” chair in the classroom of kindergartners she works with because it’s hard to sit in the kid-sized chairs when you have muscle aches and pains.

…constantly trying to find ways to make life less painful and more routine – for example, finding out from online research that taking capsules of capsaicin (the stuff they put in pepper spray to make it so effective) can relieve muscle and joint pain. No DOCTOR told her about it. Maybe they think it a “home remedy”? Harrumph!

…knowing when to rest and when to push on.

…adjusting LIFE around drug regimens, the ebb and flow of cancer-related pain, increased lymphedema due to getting bit by a kindergartner.

…deciding whether to wear boobs or not.

…deciding what it is that is powerful enough to make you go out in public when it’s a bloody production to get ready.

Yet, even though all of this “cancer stuff” happens, still we watch TV, experiment with bread-making, talk and make jokes, play with grandchildren, wonder what it would be like to take ballroom dancing lessons, cook new foods and cook old foods new ways, and eagerly spend time with friends playing cards or going to BINGO halls with free passes.

It was then that I had the stunning insight that living with breast cancer is like living with the weather (except I can’t go to BreastCancerUnderground to get the latest prediction of what to expect today…)

As insidious as it sounds, cancer has become a part of our daily life as much as changing weather.

I am undecided at this moment about whether that’s a GOOD thing (routine is good, flexibility is good – we are currently preparing for an arctic cold snap. We haven’t had one in four or so years…); or if it’s BAD. The bad is that something so horrifying has become as unnoticeable as the weather.

Anyone have a thought?

Image: http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/capital-weather-gang/201301/images/arctic-front.jpg?uuid=plGgHl5_EeKQoHPINDxtYQ

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! 6: Something To Block Breast Cancer Cells From Growing! Cyclin Dependent Kinase Inhibitors (Now Ain't THAT A Mouthful!)

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-10/pfizer-may-push-5-billion-breast-cancer-hope-for-ruling.html

Yeah, I know, the lead article is from the financial page and talks about how the biggest drug company on the planet is trying to push a breast cancer-treatment drug so it can reap the financial benefits ($5 BILLION a year)...

Some interesting facts however, stopped my eye-rolling. The discovery that certain kinases – which are proteins in the body that move molecules around so that cells get energy to keep splitting and making new cells – was made over a decade ago. Leland H. Hartwell, R. Timothy Hunt, and Paul M. Nurse received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their complete description of cyclin and cyclin-dependent kinase mechanisms, which are central to the regulation of the cell cycle.

Since then, research into drugs that might inhibit – read “slam on the brakes for” – the progression of cancer cells from doing their normal job to growing without stopping and causing breast cancer, has been fast and furious.

The reason Pfizer wants to skip the usual protocols for drug development is that, besides making them more money than they would know what to do with and making their investors giddy with glee (how much would you like to wager that we’d find this little company in the stock portfolios of our nation’s and state’s legislators (Democrats AND Republicans AND Independents???)); the initial, Phase 2 testing produced almost no adverse reactions and a definite change in the speed at which breast cancer cells were dividing.

These cyclin dependent kinases are inhibited by particular enzymes (enzymes are proteins – which you all know are what meat, nuts and legumes) – hence the name Cyclin Dependent Kinase Inhibitors or CDKIs. So, the CDKIs slow down or stop the transfer of energy to cells. They can be selected to target very, very specific places on cells. This is how they can be used to target breast cancer cells.

So – Pfizer is waiting to hear from the FDA; but likely they will use the fact that the FDA has approved other new treatments for different types of cancer to hurry the approval along.

All that us normal people can do is wait and see.

Resources: http://www.vailworkshop.org/files/2010/LibraryResources/Schwartz%20References/Schwartz%20GK,%20Targeting%20the%20Cell%20Cycle.pdf, http://www.asianscientist.com/health-medicine/prmt6-suppression-linked-to-breast-cancer-2012/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclin-dependent_kinase, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclin-dependent_kinase_inhibitor_protein
Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/PDB_1jsu_EBI.jpg

SEX (after and during breast cancer treatment…)

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

After my “Brain Cancer” essay, I predict that this will become my most popular post…

It’s one I knew I would get to, but is way too personal so I also knew I’d NEVER get to it.

A movie we watched last night has spurred me on to finally write this.

HOPE SPRINGS (with the word “eternal” just hanging there, unwritten, unspoken but entirely appropriate and implied at every twist and turn in the plot.

Take a three of my favorite actors – Meryl Streep (for multiple movies that we love!); Tommy Lee Jones (for MEN IN BLACK); and Steve Carell (for making us laugh repeatedly…and for NOT doing one single funny thing in this movie!) – and create a story that can easily lead to CONVERSATION.

Which is I have discovered, more important than anything in a marriage.

I once read that the most important sex organ in the a Human body is not…ahem. It’s not…ahem. It's not...ahem. It’s not the skin.

It’s the BRAIN. And the brain, while doing all sorts of things (which HOPE SPRINGS talks about brilliantly) directs intelligent conversation.

It led last night, to all kinds of things, some of which I’ve talked about before: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/06/i.html, http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/11/big-hairy-deal.html, http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/08/what-would-men-like-better-bigger-boobs.html, and some of which are new, like this Indian-sounding thing I’ve been reading about called “kareeza” (http://www.reuniting.info/) which we will be exploring in the future.

So for all you sickos (8-D) who were hoping for a quick thrill, go rent the movie and then rub that most important sex organ of all…your head!

Image: http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Third_Party_Photo/2012/08/07/hopesprings__1344369006_8158.jpg