out in the streets

Hello everyone

Heading back to Eugene after a weekend in Bandon. Feeling very great, things really seem to be settling this week (I say with crossed fingers). With so many things in life there is this underlying “superstition” that you are afraid to announce something is really gone, for fear that by announcing it, ie being too confident, that it will all come back.

For that reason, I am very afraid to say that I feel that I am cured or anything like that, especially about the cancer. You are always reading about those famous ones, who had said that they were cured, only to be reading their obituary a few years later on. I guess the better term is NED, or no evidence of disease. That way you are not “messing with” the gods of fate, you are only stating a fact.

Perhaps it is something like “mission accomplished”........or that its not over till the fat lady sings, and I just do not know who the fat lady is.

But everything seems to be better and I will not bore you with the gory details.

I am seeing my gyne/oncologist tomorrow about the vaginal bleeding, I guess just so she can have a look and make sure no evidence of some growth in the vagina, my guess is that she will likely do a PAP of the vagina. A PAP is really just a swab, usually of the cervix to screen for cancer cells, or “precancerous” cells. So it can be done after a hysterectomy but it is more of a vaginal wall smear, or the cuff, which is where the top of the vagina is sewn up where the cervix USED to be.

I had my CA 125 done ( I have them almost monthly and the insurance I think only covers them every 3 months, but they make me feel better. My CA 125 is still 7, which is where is has been since the end of radiation. And that is a very good and very low level. So I pay for a few here and there..

It was great this weekend to be out “in the streets” again for a protest of the war to commemorate 7 years of this Iraq war.....is commemorate the wrong word here, perhaps remem-berate. This kind of thing is important I believe, to remind people that there IS a war going on and soldiers and civilians are STILL dying.

Over the past year I have come across so many people with cancer. What a terrible fate to die early of cancer. I got to thinking that actually war is even more senseless. Historically more than 50% of those who die in war are the young, the children. -Otherwise healthy children suffering violent deaths, for what?? Now what could be more senseless than that?

I feel pretty darn lucky to have lived to the ripe age of 53 and never experienced war, first hand. In comparison cancer seems trivial, for many there is a cure.

To utilize metaphors to explain things, which I often do in my songs, I would wonder if there really is a cure for war. This country seems to have a rather metastatic case of war-itis.

Now there is a metaphor with a lot of possibilities.....

Anyways, I digress. I have included photos taken by Bob Fischer of us out there last Saturday. As you can see my hair is VERY thick, but not yet worthy of a pony tail (not that I have not tried)

Love

Janet

jankenb @ gmail.com