Spy vs spy

Last week I reported that a 65 year old pediatrician was accused of watching a 12 year old girl undress from his bathroom window 4 times in a 2 week period. A very strange case. How can this be proved? Well the mom set up an iPad from another window that recorded the doc peering at her daughter while appearing to 'pleasure himself'. So it is illegal to watch someone undress but is it legal to take movies of someone 'pleasuring himself'? And is it entrapment to let your daughter undress and attract such attention?

The court of public opinion is divided. All sorts of comments were posted that mama has a few screws loose but these were removed in the spirit of 'not blaming the victim'. But who is the victim here?

And then we have the case of the 'green' bank robber who used the local bus as an escape vehicle. Should the bus driver be indicted for abetting a crime?

I did my long run today given that today is the warmest and least snowiest for the next few days. It was a rockin' 28 degrees out ( I used to listen to a radio station in which all degrees reported were 'rockin'). I can't run on the dirt roads any longer as they are icy and stay icy unless it is well above freezing several days in a row. That kept me off them for 4 months last year and that winter wasn't all that cold (only needed gloves one day).

My husband is trying to get a hearing aid before the end of the year before our insurance turns even worse. Big surprise when they found almost no hearing at all in either ear at the higher frequencies.

There is a special ringtone at a frequency that presumably only those under 20 can hear. It has been used to drive young loiterers away. My son, well over 20, takes pride in that he can hear it.

Guidelines and bizarre image search results

Last month while in my favorite place waiting impatiently for my mammogram, I read a brochure for the newly diagnosed BC patient curious to know what they are telling people these days. I learned two things:

Sentinel node biopsies are done only on patients with tumors less than 3 cm. Now this sounds like a step backwards. I guess I fit the guidelines because my tumor at first discovery measured 1.6 cm at its largest dimension. By the time they got around to removing it, it was 3 cm and had multiplied into a second tumor. Good thing that they didn't remeasure it or I would have had the full node dissection and would suffer for the rest of my life from its consequences. Of course, if they had remeasured it, then maybe I would not have needed 2 separate surgeries. I seemed to get 'special attention'. During 'breast cancer education day', I was removed from my fellow patients to have my nodes looked at closely by ultrasound. Grossly they seemed normal but they would not rule out micrometastases. I thought the new thinking was even if they found micrometastases, there was nothing to be gained by a full nodal dissection.

BRAC1 testing is to be done on estrogen negative patients less than 60 regardless of family history. This was not offered to me as I could not pinpoint any family member who had cancer before the age of 60 on either side. It is a dominant gene so to have it, I would have needed to get it from my mother or father. My mother and her sister had BC but were diagnosed in their 60s and 70s. There is no smoking gun on my mother's side. Inheriting it from ones father is trickier as just because they have the gene doesn't mean they would get cancer. Also he had few relatives but none died of cancer and the majority died of old age. But now they are finding it in women with similar histories to mine and I have daughters and granddaughters....


Bizarre Image search results. Nerd as I am, I love Statcounter and look at it often. My number one hit these days is a post entitled Edelweiss. I sometimes look for keyphrases that lead to my blog. One was biracial baby with Downs' and it came up with a picture of Maya. Although she is biracial, she does not remotely appear to have Downs'. Another image search was huge feet. This is what they came up with:

Sigh....

Topography maps

Ponte Vecchio from the windows of The Uffici

In the Van Andel Museum in Grand Rapids, which I visited as part of ArtPrize, there is a 20 foot tall topography map of Michigan. I would have stared at much longer if only I had some time. One could quickly see all the high points of Michigan and the low, flat areas that start just south and east of Ann Arbor. I have biked through almost all of the lower peninsula and through some of the upper. I haven't biked east of St. Ignace or much west of Dickinson County. You can see that Gaylord is the high point of a plateau. My ride from Ludington to Reed City was made difficult not only because of a rare east wind and the sandy trails but a steady uphill. The steepest hill I went down ended up in East Jordan. I was in a crowd so I couldn't brake. My odometer clocked 42 mph. I couldn't read it as my eyes were watering. I just hoped for the best.
I did buy a US geological map of our county with its isoalts but it isn't immediately clear if you are ascending or descending unless you look very carefully. I need a three dimensional map where I can feel the hills.
Biking south of Ann Arbor, the only hills encountered are the expressway overpasses, it is so flat.

Today was a slow day. I thought I would have Maya but Naomi must have gotten out of work early. It was rainy most of the day and then it turned to snow. Naomi was here last night making a calendar of Don'tae's family for his mother. I made one today of my trips to Italy. It was fun to do.
I watched too much TV mainly a few episodes of Boss. Well acted and photograhed but so, so depressing. There isn't a single redeeming character on it. Satan, your kingdom must come down, indeed.

Some of the Italian pix I included:

Castelvecchio

Confetti in Sulmona

Sulmona

Duomo in Milano

Gargoyles in Duomo

Gagliano Aterno

Manarola

Monterosso

The above is Isola Bella in Lago Maggiore outside of Stresa

Animal hats, the gold kimono and an avocado boat

Cute hats for the grandkids

Fancy embroidery on back

My silk kimono. My friend modified it so it didn't go all the way to my ankles. It had looked more like a robe before instead of a pretty top

I am a sucker for cute hats for kids. I will send 4 of them off to Boston though at least one of the boys hates hats but maybe when he sees how cute he'll look.... There was a really cute penguin hat too but as it had so much white in it, it would be hard to keep clean.

The kimono I bought a few months ago at a resale shop.Beautiful silk but the lining was falling apart and it was way too long for a top. My friend offered to fix it. It looks gold in this picture but in the low light that I am sitting in, it appears tangerine, a color that I would never have worn with my dish water blonde hair but now that my hair is lighter, I have been wearing more oranges and yellows.

Last night a friend and I went to the nicest sushi restaurant in Ann Arbor. The waiter suggested that we get an avocado boat, a whole avocado filled with spicy shrimp and then the whole thing was deep fried. Sounded weird, but why not? Turns out that the avocado was served on a bed of fried crumbs, tasty. It was a very pretty dish. I should have taken pictures (I usually have a camera). The spider roll and the bad boy roll were good too.

It is raining and very windy on my running day. I am hoping it will be better in a few hours but that seems unlikely. We will have lunch in an hour or so with Josh and Julia. The latter will graduate with her Masters in Accounting in a few weeks. She just found a job with her anticipated degree. When will they fit babies in?

Rabbit, rabbit..

From web

I have a Facebook friend who posts "Rabbit, rabbit.." on every first of the month. I assumed this was some secret code between her and one of her followers but apparently in some cultures it is considered good luck to repeat rabbit, rabbit (sometimes three times) at the first of the month.

It's been a while since I have seen my bunnies or my chipmunks or my mice. Not missing the last two creatures so much. What I do have is a neighborhood cat that lurks around the edges of my house. Could there be a connection? I chase it off in the summer as there are so many baby birds but now, she can hunt as much as she wants.

I am eagerly awaiting spring.

Gasoline Roulette

This is a game my husband loves to play. I do not enjoy it one bit. Basically it is to see how far one can drive on fumes with the Needs Gas! light on. If I protest, I am told that we have plenty of gas. I try to reason that the dregs have water and other sediment that will destroy the engine but to no avail. We have run out of gas at least 3 times: all at very inconvenient times but still he does not learn the lesson. I try to annoy him by saying I was forced to buy gas around our house (at least 25 cents/gallon more than the 'cheap side'). I was again reminded of this game today when I tried to go somewhere in my ice encrusted car that I hadn't driven in 2 weeks. He has though and had drained the tank.

A variant of gasoline roulette: see how much gas we can stuff in the tank! Also, always end up with an even amount (like $35.00; not $34.79) even though we are paying by credit card and gas is dribbling down the side of the car. Also this takes time: To fill up the first 99% of the tank takes as much as he spends getting that last 1% in. I have given him warnings written by 'car experts' about the dangers of over-filling the tank. Again to deaf ears.

(Speaking of deaf ears: he is finally taking the first steps towards dealing with his hearing loss today)

Another annoying game: see how long we can drive a beater. We had an Aerostar forever because its engine was still good. No transmission or brakes but gotta love the engine. This was during a time in which we were both working and could afford something other than a beater.

See how many trucks and slower cars we can pass before we exit even though we might occasionally miss the exit during the heat of the game. Reminders that we are exiting soon and really are not in any kind of hurry just result in annoyance.

More snow fell last night. I hit the malls instead of running.. Not as fun as I had hoped.

Taxing taxol

Recently I learned that my neighbor was taking oral Taxol for the treatment of metastatic prostate cancer. Prostate cancer has much in common with breast cancer: about the same number of men are diagnosed each year as women with breast cancer; BRAC1 mutations increase incidence of both prostate and breast cancer; it is usually sex hormone driven; and if it spreads, it goes to similar places: bones, liver, lungs, brain...
How it differs is that it is half as deadly as BC but  a pain to biopsy and surgically deal with. In general, it is much slower growing than BC.

But ORAL Taxol? It is very hard for a drug to survive the digestive system. Assuming the drug survives the highly acidic stomach, it has to be absorbed in the gut and survive all the liver enzymes. Having the drug injected directly into the bloodstream avoids all those problems. In the past, it was found that the cytochromes in the liver deactivated Taxol. They had a formulation with cyclosporin which would neutralize the cytochromes but the cyclosporin would also deactivate the immune system. Not good. I am assuming they found something relatively harmless to deal with the cytochromes. I know grapefruit juice interferes with some of the liver enzymes leading to spikes in blood levels of certain drugs (statins for example).

But taking the Taxol daily would eliminate the very long infusions that are necessary. I had 4 doses spread out over 8 weeks. After I complained about the severe muscle and nerve pain, it was suggested that maybe I should have 12 weekly doses instead.
Nein danke.
This would extend my stay in chemoland 4 weeks and involve 12 painful infusions versus 4. From then on out, if I were asked how I felt on Taxol, I would just say, Fine.

On various boards, there is a debate on which is worse: the side effects of Taxol or those of Adriamycin. In general, people vote for the Red Devil. Aside from the nausea, fatigue and mucus membrane sores, it can cause some long term though rare side effects down the road: heart failure and leukemia. Taxol rarely causes nausea but the numbness and pain due to nerve damage is really no fun.

I had to wait until late afternoon yesterday for the sun to burn a path in the snow for me to run. Today was Maya's enrichment class, which she enjoys.