The New And Improved Unofficial R65 Forum V2
General Category => Totally Off-Topic Discussions, Rants, Tire & Oil Threads, Etc. => Topic started by: nhmaf on November 04, 2010, 11:37:04 PM
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I just have to rant - please feel free to ignore this thread if you like.. I'm just feeling aggravated and frustrated that so many good people I've known over the years have passed on from the big 'C', cancer - and I've now just learned that one of my best friends from university is battling breast cancer AND a sarcoma within her chest, AND a good friend whom I used to work with every day ~ 5 years ago has just told me he has just been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer - they give him 2-4 months, 6 months on the outside if he endures chemotherapy.
Good, clean living people shouldn't be dying in their mid 40s, especially when they still have young children..
I hope that our medical technology can reach the level of readily curing all cancers someday soon, even if it means we continue to have the most god damn expensive medical insurance on the planet. I know that we've come a tremendous way, but it still ain't good enough.
Sorry for the rant,
Mike
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I'm sorry you have reason to rant.
This reminds me of an old song. Remember the band, Spirit? The song Natures Way?
It's nature's way of telling you something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you in a song
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you, summer breeze
It's nature's way of telling you, dying trees
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way, it's nature's way
It's nature's way, it's nature's way
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong
It's nature's way of telling you
In a song, oh-h
It's nature's way of receiving you
It's nature's way
It's nature's way of retrieving you
It's nature's way
It's nature's way of telling you
Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong
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There is something wrong. I believe one in six (check this) women now get Breast Cancer. Did this happen 100 years ago or even 50? The research tends toward what makes some of us susceptible to Cancer using DNA & Genetics but what's changed that's causing it.
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A colleague was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer which made me want to learn something about it and it scared me a bit.
It's quite common like breast cancer. 1 in 10 men will eventually get prostate cancer but if you're lucky and it develops slowly you get to die of old age first.
I hope I'm lucky or as the Who put it in the lyrics of "My Generation"
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
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In my family there's nothing else to kill us, just cancer or alzheimers. I don't think anybody has ever had a heart attack. And they are all overweight except me. I'll probably be the first, when I'm out running in the park.
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My mom recently had a large part of her intestines and reproductive organs removed. A long summer of chemo has left her pretty frail.
My dad passed from lymphoma when I was ten. Couple years later I developed some nearly debilitating neurosis connected to food additives, cigarette smoke, chemicals in everyday products. I hated reading anything or going anywhere since there just seemed to be this explosion of reminders all of a sudden about cancer. We had to read "death be not proud" in school and it just made me want to quit. A therapist told me that my obsessing was not rational. People have always died of cancer. He said he was about my age when his dad got a blue ford van. Suddenly, it seemed, everyone in town was copying his dad. Blue ford vans all over the place. A misperception, of course. I understood his point, but still couldn't shake the threat. It followed me into jobs and relationships and left some mess.
Now there's a little of the same thing. Since this last year with mom, my antennae is tuned to cancer once again and it seems that it's EVERYWHERE. Calm down brad, nothing's changed.
Recently I read an article, in the New Yorker I think it was, highlighting the work of a few professionals arguing that environmental factors, man made factors, are indeed a greater cause than is generally accepted. Countering the "it's always been with us, but under different names and, besides, we're all living longer" assurance they're applying modern forensics to bones and tissue samples from the past and discovering that the prevlance of childhood cancers was extremely rare, compared to today's figures, prior to the last two centuries.
What to say? I have some beef with Rachael Carson and extreme back-to-nature fear mongering. I like my modern life. I also have some beef with totally 'free market' industrialists and a wholesale, often public, denial of any harm for the sake of profit.
But I don't want to die of cancer before my time. And I've already seen some enormous costs.
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Its a bitch..................i know
Lou
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100 years ago you were lucky to make it to 60. You normally died of something else that we hadn't come up with immunisation for. OR it was classified as a natural death, meaning you died, we don't know why, but you weren't murdered, or had suffered a severe accident.
100 years ago, what was cancer. And you would never had heard someone from across the world had died of cancer, let alone in a different state. We hear a lot more of deaths, but we are living longer.
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On average, yes, but when people are dying from cancer in their 30s and 40s, that is what makes me frustrated. I've had at least 5 uncles and 3 aunts pass on from cancer, though they each had at least made it well into their 60s or 70s at the time. IT is still a sad, awful thing, though they did at least manage to raise their children and accomplish alot in their lives before leaving this world.
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It doesn't always end badly. Eight years ago I got neck cancer (vocal cords), diagnosed a 6 p.m. on a Thursday (I thought I just had laryngitis or similar), into hospital on the Monday, 5-hour operation the next day, back home 12 days later with hole in neck for breathing and a snappy little Blom-Singer speaking valve for a funny computer-like voice. But it works and I no longer need to go for check-ups and have no problem riding the R65. So no need to lose hope - particularly with the NHS (socialised medicine to you in the US!) to get me out of a hole quick and free of charge...
I believe someone who fancies himself as chief of the hell's angels has the same condition, is that right?
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Yes, that would be Sonny Barger, founder of the Hell's Angels MC, a current resident of the Phoenix metro area .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Barger
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Vocalizing using neck muscles is difficult. It means sucking air down the throat and then using it to speak, in effect just like talking while burping. Not everyone can manage it. I haven't tried. The speaking valve is much easier but does involve using a finger to block the air opening in the neck (this sends air from lungs to mouth so you can talk), voice is hoarse but quite easy to understand it seems. If that can't work for some, there is the "Servox", like a flashlight you press against the neck and talk, that's really computer like, there's a loud background hum, like with bagpipes. It's better than nothing but only just. I keep one as a spare in case the valve drops out. It never has. :D
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What is bizarre is the old men I would see with a tracheotomy that would smoke cigarettes through their trach hole...
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What is bizarre is the old men I would see with a tracheotomy that would smoke cigarettes through their trach hole...
That would freak out a lot of people, especially if they blow smoke out through the tracheotomy hole.
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I've never seen anyone do that, you would have to inhale through the stoma as well as blow smoke out! but I've heard of people doing it. According to the hospital staff it's just an unusual way of committing suicide.
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<startrant>
What with all the chemicals we allow into the environment and the new genetically modified foods we eat and all the hormones that go into them to make them come to market quicker and with less cost, why are you surprised that people of all ages are getting and dying of cancers?
My wife had the lower third of her colon sectioned for a polyp gone huge a couple of years ago. If she hadn't had her surgery she would probably be dying a horrible death right now. Now when she was in the hospital I had to keep a constant watch on her so the nurses didn't leave her alone too long. The one time I go away for a couple of hours to do something that can't wait, they take her off the fluids IV and she starts having a wild nervous ticks do to dehydration. Boy, you should have seen those nurses scurry when I got back and started raising hell....
Don't get me started.
BTW - my advise: Get right with the creator of your choice (or not) and have the best term insurance you can afford to take care of the people you love after you are gone. Really. ALSO: Get out and ride every chance you get for what ever reason you can imagine. I drove to Savannah for 45 lbs of fresh shrimp for a BMWMOGA club event that I could not even eat - last week. Practice random acts of kindness especially when you are on the bike.
Just this last week: on the Britbike website..the big 'C' takes another life well lived: http://www.britbike.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=342379#Post342379
<endrant>
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Get out and ride every chance you get for what ever reason you can imagine.....Practice random acts of kindness especially when you are on the bike.
Both reasons why we were put on this Earth.
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BTW - my advise: Get right with the creator of your choice (or not) and have the best term insurance you can afford to take care of the people you love after you are gone.Really. ALSO:Get out and ride every chance you get for what ever reason you can imagine.I drove to Savannah for 45 lbs of fresh shrimp for a BMWMOGA club event that I could not even eat - last week.Practice random acts of kindness especially when you are on the bike.
AMEN to that!!