Life is Never Boring

I checked out with surgeon yesterday. Everything is healing nicely and I don't need to go back. He was concerned about my neck brace and had debated between making the cut horizontal or vertical. He made it vertical and it is okay with the brace. I have been wearing it only when going in the car or for a walk to limit how long it is on. As he had said before, the chunk was cancer but a different kind than either of the other two. He took it to cancer board and the consensus was to do genetic study. (Interestingly at the hospital in Bakersfield cancer board meetings are on Wednesdays too.) The study would include testing for the BRC1 gene and looking at family tree for all types of cancer. Should be interesting. Mom did lots of work on geneology but I don't know if she made any notes on cause of death. She gave all of us the family tree and I also have her working notebook. It is a 4 inch thick binder that is full. Sounds like work for some lucky person. Just might have to get my sister to come up again to sort through the messy family tree. Stick with me and life will not be boring.

75 years and counting

I wrote the following on Saturday and debated about posting. Finally decided to do it. Friday was the 75th year anniversary of Lou Gehrig's famous speach at Yankee stadium. In it he credited the fans in every stadium cheering for him and making him the luckiest man alive. Across the major league baseball world there were many ceremonies honoring him and creating awareness for ALS. It would be nice if the money baseball is contributing to research helped make a breakthrough on treatment. His positive attitude is a great example, but it sure would be nice to have a cure with his name rather than a disease. I find it sad that 75 years later we don't have any treatment just more technology to make life easier or even possible.. In fact it is no longer an orphan disease. Federal money for research continues to be from the Department of Defense because veterans have it twice as often as the general population. Even something that gets enough positive results to make it to a stage two clinical trial would be encouraging.