Friday and Weekend update

I meant to update my blog on Friday but found myself swept up in minor financial drama followed by an overwhelming need to sleep, sleep, and sleep some more.  Here it is Sunday night and I feel as if I just woke up from a nap started on Friday afternoon.  I know sleep is a process for healing but this is ridiculous! 

Due to my semi-comatose weekend there is little to report for the blog.  My Friday began with the (now customary) visit to the radiation lounge at J. Graham Brown.  All in all these sessions consist of a giant donut-shaped machine rotating and waltzing around the stationary axis of my body.  I'm reminded of my late teens when I did a work-study semester at the University of Louisville planetarium and the huge graceful projector there.  The radiation machine moves with the same slow precision as that projector, twisting with delicate precision amidst the stars and black holes.  It's like watching a space craft in some invisible orbit.   The only thing missing is the Blue Danube as the Pan Am space clipper hurtles towards its final rendezvous with the space station in 2001.

As to the financial drama mentioned earlier, I was unable to resolve it Friday but have a plan to attack it tomorrow morning after radiation.  I'm optimistic it can be reasonably straightened out.  If not, I'll certainly be commenting on it in future blog posts.

On a more positive front I am again online and connected to the internet.  Ta-dah!  For this I am indebted to a very dear friend whose heart knows no bounds.  One thing I am learning from this process is how absolutely essential friends and family are.  Most of my life has been a fight against compromise and hypocrisy.  I've made decisions, some bad, some good, all based on an attempt to be true to myself and the things I believe.  But as I've grown older I've been forced to face time and again how many of these decisions were in fact based in pride or stubbornness.  I survived by virtue of being smugly self-assured in my beliefs.  If these past few years have taught me anything, it's that everything I ever judged was only measured against my own ignorance.  The more I know, the less I'm certain of. 

Friday ended early for me with a nap-turned-weekend-hibernation.
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My Google news feed did produce one interesting item that I'll include as food for thought.

 'Universal' cancer vaccine developedA vaccine that can train cancer patients' own bodies to seek out and destroy tumour cells has been developed by scientists.

The  company Vaxil Biotheraputics along with researchers at Tel Aviv University are testing an extremely hopeful lead in the war on Cancer.  Scientists have found that a molecule called MUC1, which is found in high amounts on the surface of cancer cells, can be used to help the immune system detect tumors.  They have produced a new drug that uses a small section of the molecule to prime the immune system so that it can identify and destroy cancer cells.

The catch: clinical trials are expected to last another 6 years at least before its available to the general public.  Darn!

' Click here to read the whole story.