The Name Game

A few weeks ago I was in the Wellness Center when a young woman who works there walked in with her 4 year old son Oliver. This Oliver had a grandma named Sue too.Oliver..a rare name in these parts but apparently growing in popularity. Shanna hated her name and vowed that she would name her child from the Top 100 names. Apparently it is in the Top 10 in the UK and Australia.

The other day at Josh and Julia's, Julia talked about her experience living in Zurich, Switzerland for 3 years starting when she was 6. She was able to speak German at that time but no longer knows it. Kids learn languages so fast, I always assumed they would remember it though I had a boss who went to school in Wales for 10 years and spoke Welsh in the schools. Now he only knows a few words. Anyway, Julia's stay in Zurich was cut short as they were getting hate mail and phone calls because her family has the same last name as a certain unpopular President and it was assumed that they must be related even though their last name is fairly common. I suppose it would have been even worse if they were there recently during the reign of this President's son. Julia was very quick to shed this name when she married Josh: she doesn't even use it as a middle name.
I ran in the pouring rain this morning. I don't mind rain except it is hard to see through my glasses but a good run nonetheless. Then it was back to WCC to meet with the learning specialists to devise a support system for Naomi. Her counsellor was very good and helpful. We also fine-tuned her schedule to make it easier for Naomi to succeed. She didn't want to get an ID yesterday as we rushed over there in a panic so she didn't look camera ready but today she got her picture.

Since the big Cancer meeting in June, there hasn't been much cancer news. There was a paper on how much more likely a local recurrence is with ER negs vs positives. (fourfold going up to 169 fold if the patient was less than 30) Argh! I really wish I knew all that I do now when I made that decision for breast conservation. There were more papers on the mechanism of how low Vit D levels can possibly cause cancer. One slight positive in a paper about risk factors for recurrence: tumors on the outer parts of the breast are not as dangerous as those more in the interior. Mine was in the outer section (though I couldn't feel the sneaky thing) so good for me.
Also there was a paper predicting heart damage due to radiation. No problems at all for us right breast cancer patients but for the left ones, the heart can be damaged. A predictive sign is tele-something or other-red spots that form over the affected skin.

My hair seems to be growing but mainly just the hair on the top of my skull. My 'mohawk' gets taller everyday. Not much action on the sides. For a list of all the side effects that persist after treatment, click on Sharon's The Cookie Jar that is on the side of this post. She covers alot of them. I am fortunate not to have as many though I notice my eyelashes are thinning out again. How can this be happening! It's not rare either. One woman lost all her eyelashes 3 times. One bizarre side effect that persists and this actually is a good one, is my apocrine glands on the right side are missing (and I never had them on the left) so I don't need deodorant. I put some on in case they decide to come back all of a sudden like my facial hair did.