Interesting interview with Dr. Friedman. I usually encourage people to re-establish strained relationships especially with their parents. I think just throwing people away for selfish reasons is just a cop out.

Scott

Photographers have all models sign release forms to allow the use of materials the photographer produces. Palin is media-savvy enough to know her rights, and could easily have said, “No, I don’t like this. It projects the wrong image.” She didn’t.

Palin doesn’t mind using her sexiness when it’s to her advantage.

She has no right to complain when the very same material is used to her disadvantage.

Also, thanks for the beautiful Johnny Mercer piece — as a recovering alcoholic, I know “One For My Baby” very well.

Why? Because my invasive breast cancer was first detected, by a mammogram, when I was 47 — too young for them! Apparently, the cancer was probably already at least FIVE years old by the time it was detected, so I was actually even younger when it first started chugging away. By the way, there is NO known history of breast cancer in my family.

The U.S.P.S.T.F. was concerned that some women might experience the “anxiety” of false positive results from their mammograms?!! GIVE ME A BREAK!!! I have REAL, ACTUAL CANCER, and anxiety is NOT in my vocabulary!!! It WOULD be if I didn’t have health insurance — THAT’S the real ISSUE; THAT’s what separates one woman’s reaction from another’s!!! We should ALL have health insurance as citizens of the World!!!

The mammograms can “hurt” when they are administered?? GIVE ME A BREAK!!! It’s now 15 years since I was first diagnosed. NOW I have arrived at Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. You want to know PAIN? When the cancer has spread to your bones, as mine has, THEN you’ll know pain!!! What is needed is better detection of metastasis AND better health insurance reimbursement for visits to cancer specialists once everyone THINKS you have “licked” the cancer!!

It is well known that younger women tend to have more INVASIVE breast cancer. How much do the study’s statistics look “better” for older women because the younger ones died before they could even be counted?! Also, this study is about DEATHS due to breast cancer. More and more women are “LIVING with cancer”. The QUALITY of that LIVING is DEFINITELY related to EARLY DETECTION! Are these researchers so IDIOTIC that they can’t take THAT into account? SORRY, but I use that word BECAUSE the QUALITY of my Stage Four life would be A LOT BETTER if Stage Four had been detected earlier in my case (thru an earlier bone scan and CAT scan). Perhaps I could EVEN have stalled the cancer at Stage Three, but at the very least, KNOWING the cancer was in my bones due to detection would have caused me to change some of my activities, and I would NOT have engaged in an activity that WRECKED my right pelvis where cancer already dwelled, but without my knowledge!!!

I heard an interview with one of the study’s professionals. I heard her admit that the study did NOT take race into account sufficiently. No matter WHAT your age, if you are African-American, your chances of having health insurance and of surviving your cancer are worse. Is the increased cancer risk due to genetics or because of factors related to increased likelihood of poverty and lack of adequate medical care? Let’s research THAT, at every level possible! I am half “mulatto”, half white, and I appear completely Caucasian; yet NO health care professional has thought it significant when I mention my multi-generational African-American ancestry. I would like my race to be listed so that researchers could understand the racial dimension of my “early onset” profile, in order to help women of “more evident” color, who frequently have even EARLIER onset!

We women have to help each other, because THESE researchers are sure not helping us! They are not even asking US what we think should be researched, and what a SOURCE of ideas we ARE!!

On a related note: physicians think that women with estrogen-dependent breast cancer should stay away from phyto-estrogens (plant estrogens) in foods. YET, WHAT IS THE AMERICAN FOOD INDUSTRY DOING??? Adding SOY (a phyto-estrogen) to just about EVERYTHING! I fear for the generations of younger women who are eating so much of this soy that we might finally BE talking about “statistically significant” when members of their age group develop estrogen-dependent breast cancer!!!!!

Thank you for your ALWAYS wonderful show!

Thank you so much for your beautiful homage to Johnny Mercer. Your analysis was so profound, interesting and spot on that it literally stopped me in my track ( a rare occurence! ) as a jazz aficionado myself your words made everything come together for me!

BRAVO!

Thanks for the Mercer birthday story. As a former drinker (quit 25 years ago) I still feel that sense of inarticulated spiritual homelessness, that nameless yearning, in the voices of the well chosen singers you represented, especially Dinah Washington, Lady Day, and the later Frank Sinatra.
This was such a well written, spot on musically edited segment. How perfectly you described that sad “late night forced bonhomie”.
And thanks to the musical spots, it’s time for me to re-check Aretha, Dinah, and Frank.
Well done.
many thanks

Larry Zaborski

There are a number of definitions of what a family is, and in talking about my experiences with others, I have found little need for blood ties to be as strong as we make them in our culture. Sometimes there is no reason to be together except but blood, and that is no reason to take the abuse some parents rain down on their children.

My small invasive cancer was found in an office visit with my primary care doctor. It had not been picked up in my mammogram 6 months previously. That discovery led me to an ultrasound, biopsy, lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation and I am grateful for that because my prognosis was excellent because it was caught early.

It is indeed stressful to have mammograms and biopsies, but I feel that it is irresponsible to suggest that women should not check their own breasts. And that stress has to be balanced with the stress that most certainly will occur if a late stage cancer is detected because there has been no screening

I had no history of breast cancer in my family and was 48 at diagnosis. The large majority of the women I met throughout this process were women in their 30’s and 40’s. And those in their 30’s seemed to have more aggressive types of cancer.

This experience has led me to think that not only should people have mammograms at a younger age (at 30 or 35) but that MRI’s should also be added into the mix when dense breast tissue (which most people have) cannot be clearly seen in mammography.

No one should die of breast cancer but they do because of late detection and spread to other parts of the body.

I am healthy and consider myself cured, but I will now always be vigilant through dr’s visits, exams and screening. My doctor, in my opinion, saved my life. Everyone should have that benefit.