Dear Maizie:
I hope you, Emma and Ellie are running through some soft, high grass and stopping to discover new smells. I hope the sun is shining on your velvet head. I hope you are eating those little cheese chunks you like and taking long naps under an old oak tree on your Coolaroo bed. I hope you are looking at the moon and remembering me.
Speaking of the moon . . . the sky this week was worth a deep breath in and long look up.
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If only you could be a little bit more positive. The marketing gimmick that just won’t die and the pressure cancer patients can do without it. Not just cancer patients, anyone who’s struggling with disease.
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Research news. Possible new approach from researchers at MIT for LC patients with a KRAS-driven genetic mutation, like mine.
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Cancer heroes. Nice profile in the Washington Post on immunotherapy pioneer James Allison and Padmanee Sharma, their work at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (shout out!) and their unlikely life together. Kinda cool when I’m there knowing these two are on some floor above me working to cure cancer.
*****
National education hilarity Betsy DeVos schools us on what it’s like to be really, really smart and stuff.
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If you missed Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War on PBS, all episodes will be streamed until October 15th. Don’t miss it.
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Perspectives. There is no breathing room with lung cancer (no pun intended). Make it through treatment, mark an anniversary, maybe two, contemplate making it to the next one, hope some new drug comes along to make it even further. If you’re lucky, only a few minutes of every day are spent wondering when when the cancer will come back.
Truth. “He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.” — Immanual Kant
