Livestrong Challenge
Jenson Hagen
Lance Armstrong et al will be on hand out at Nike for this year’s Livestrong Challenge next Sunday, June 29th. The Lance Armstrong Foundation works to support individuals and families that are facing cancer and cancer treatment. If you support his mission, then here is your chance to get involved. You can register for several biking or running events. If you desire to send donations to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, I have a donation page. You can support my efforts to raise money or donate directly. Your generosity is appreciated.
I never really gave much energy to the whole cancer establishment. I was always happy to note that my family was fine and then out of the blue I got to see my dad dwindle down to nothing seven months ago. It entered my family almost overnight. By the time my dad took his last breathe, he had thousands of tiny round nodules all throughout his body. You could see and feel them sitting under his skin. A product of melanoma--the worst form of skin cancer. It spread like wildfire and only took five months to end my father's life. One less Blue Oregon reader.
The sun is no longer our friend. We have destroyed to a large extent those protective layers of atmosphere. My dermatologist recommended using a large capful of sunscreen that contains helioplex, such as one made by Neutrogena. It’s those folks with less skin pigmentation that never see sun in winter and then expect their skin to re-acclimate to the sun’s rays each summer that are at highest risk of skin cancer. That would be a high percentage of people living in Oregon. Uhm, that would be me. Please don't hesitate to see a dermatologist, don’t let yourself get a burn and buy some sunscreen with helioplex before summer heats up.
And cherish those around you. Life is fragile!
|
0 readers like this.
Like it!
|
10:20 p.m.
Jun 21, '08
if you want to help a young man who is about to go into the Coast Guard but before that is doing his first charity, and big bike ride, then please visit my son, Jesse's, Livestrong Challenge page. we've had too much cancer in our family: it took my mom, his aunt, and my dad, brother & sil are all survivors. Jesse's been inspired by Lance to do something -- he just happens to love biking, too.
Jenson, i'm sorry for your loss and how sudden it was. thank you for posting this on BlueOregon. i hope people respond, both by participating (Portland is host to one of only 4 of the Challenges) and by donating. i'm proud of my son for doing a little something, and i'm looking forward to cheering him on next week.
10:37 p.m.
Jun 21, '08
Jenson, thanks for the information and for your reflections from the heart. My condolences, though we haven't met.
Jun 22, '08
Jenson,
I'm sorry for your loss. It's never easy.
As a fair skinned redhead, it's definitely something of concern to me, and something we all need to be careful about. It can all happen so fast.
Jun 22, '08
Jenson,
Very sorry to hear you lost your dad to cancer. My mother-in-law just died of colon cancer.
"We have destroyed to a large extent those protective layers of atmosphere."
Source please?
I don't believe that solar radiation just became a threat to human health in the last 200 years. I do believe cancer has been a scourge on mankind for several millenia.
The increase in human longevity over the past 200 years suggests we are far HEALTHIER today than ever before.
That said, if you live long enough, you are very likely to die of cancer. And progress in medical diagnostics means that very few cancers go undetected. Does that suggest that degradation of the environment leads to increased cancer rates, or that aging populations are at much higher risk than when life expectancy was 50 years old?
11:47 a.m.
Jun 22, '08
messieur t,
What they teach us in public health grad school is that over the course of the 20th century (with peak gains mostly between 1920 and 1960), in industrialized countries huge strides were made in finding means of immunization and treatment for infectious diseases, particularly those caused by bacteria, not so much viruses (though some of those too, like measles or chicken pox). There is a somewhat older back story that involves diet improvement in quantity and regularity due to improved food distribution, ending the pre-industrial pattern in which severe undernutrition lowering immune function led to large-scale epidemics in periodic famine areas. There probably also are smaller effects of decline of occupationally related deaths due to sheer wearing out of bodies from hard physical labor over long hours.
Anyway, by the 1960s the medical and public health journals were trumpeting the defeat of epidemic disease, and the shift of public health problems to chronic diseases, including cancer, but also coronary and other forms of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and so on. Death rates from all of those diseases rose because other things weren't killing people first, in part.
But there also are effects of human activities, including diet and exercise choices, smoking, air pollution and so on. I do think ozone depletion at higher levels of the atmosphere is held to have increased the quantity of damaging solar radiation. So it's both.
The picture is also getting more complicated for a couple of reasons. One is infectious disease comeback, between global circulation of "new" diseases, virus evolution, and development of anti-biotic resistant strains of "old" diseases.
The other is that "cancer" as a catch-all category for diseases involving uncontrolled cell replication is being increasingly understood through subcategories involving different mechanisms for different kinds of cancers. So as we've been widely informed, a great deal of cervical cancer is now understood to be caused by the human papilloma virus, which is sexually transmitted and widespread in the population. Other cancers seem to involve repeated "insults" from carcinogenic physical and chemical phenomena, which may be natural environmental (sunlight) or behavioral environmental (smoking, but also tanning to a degree, after the decline of outdoor agricultural labor) or social environmental (diesel fuel micro-particulates as asthma triggers, and other air pollutants with respiratory diseases including maybe some cancer contribution) -- also set in a context of complex genetic potential vulnerabilities, affected both by alternate possible paths of gene expression, themselves partly environmental, and by exposure to environmental cancer-triggering insults among the genetically more vulnerable.
At least, that's my best understanding.
11:49 a.m.
Jun 22, '08
messieur t,
What they teach us in public health grad school is that over the course of the 20th century (with peak gains mostly between 1920 and 1960), in industrialized countries huge strides were made in finding means of immunization and treatment for infectious diseases, particularly those caused by bacteria, not so much viruses (though some of those too, like measles or chicken pox). There is a somewhat older back story that involves diet improvement in quantity and regularity due to improved food distribution, ending the pre-industrial pattern in which severe undernutrition lowering immune function led to large-scale epidemics in periodic famine areas. There probably also are smaller effects of decline of occupationally related deaths due to sheer wearing out of bodies from hard physical labor over long hours.
Anyway, by the 1960s the medical and public health journals were trumpeting the defeat of epidemic disease, and the shift of public health problems to chronic diseases, including cancer, but also coronary and other forms of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and so on. Death rates from all of those diseases rose because other things weren't killing people first, in part.
But there also are effects of human activities, including diet and exercise choices, smoking, air pollution and so on. I do think ozone depletion at higher levels of the atmosphere is held to have increased the quantity of damaging solar radiation. So it's both.
The picture is also getting more complicated for a couple of reasons. One is infectious disease comeback, between global circulation of "new" diseases, virus evolution, and development of anti-biotic resistant strains of "old" diseases.
The other is that "cancer" as a catch-all category for diseases involving uncontrolled cell replication is being increasingly understood through subcategories involving different mechanisms for different kinds of cancers. So as we've been widely informed, a great deal of cervical cancer is now understood to be caused by the human papilloma virus, which is sexually transmitted and widespread in the population. Other cancers seem to involve repeated "insults" from carcinogenic physical and chemical phenomena, which may be natural environmental (sunlight) or behavioral environmental (smoking, but also tanning to a degree, after the decline of outdoor agricultural labor) or social environmental (diesel fuel micro-particulates as asthma triggers, and other air pollutants with respiratory diseases including maybe some cancer contribution) -- also set in a context of complex genetic potential vulnerabilities, affected both by alternate possible paths of gene expression, themselves partly environmental, and by exposure to environmental cancer-triggering insults among the genetically more vulnerable.
At least, that's my best understanding.
3:03 p.m.
Jun 22, '08
Jenson,
Please accept my condolences on the loss of your father. I lost mine in a whirlwind of dementia for 5 months, a few years back. There are still days or moments ( especially those of my children) when I forget he's gone. A staunch R, I am sure he would have been swearing a blue streak about my being at the state convention yesterday...but he was an even stauncher father and on some level would of dug it.
We have had three parents battling cancer at our children's elementary school this year and one precious, tenacious 3rd grader, battling for her life.
Your post in some ways, reminds me of the point I was trying to make about Tim Russert's death last week. Not looking to rehash it either. From many,many accounts, he was a terrifically loving and loyal man to those who he knew. At the end of the day, relationships trump politics. And if your's don't, you got some work to do.
Jun 26, '08
Jenson,
I'm sorry about your father. I'm glad you've found the Livestrong cause. Did you see they have a site now where you can track all your health and diet info? It's pretty useful.
Livestrong.com
<h2>Good luck.</h2>