I’m currently in limbo, finishing off my dissertation. I broke my finger which warranted me getting an extension for two weeks. So now I have a week and half left, and people are disappearing from York whilst I sit in my room reading about concentration camps and ‘The Red Shoes’. This is made much easier by the fact I actually really like my topic. However, all the books I need to dip into at the last second have been taken from the library and I’m drinking far too much tea. All I know is that this is going to a long week and a bit. But come the 4th of October I’ll be blogging and writing again.
I watched Pina [Wim Wenders, 2011] yesterday, and it was stunningly beautiful. I wish it would have shown a whole dance, and I kept wanting to see the faces of the audience. The dvd extras interview with Wim Wenders had such awful sound I wondered why they’d bothered putting it on. You could barely understand what Wenders was saying amongst the babble in the background.
I also saw Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It was very good, the acting was incredible and I loved the sound design. The framing was gorgeous, the only thing was that the focus pulling felt a little arduous at times. However, I loved that he didn’t patronize the audience into spelling everything out too simply. I felt confused at points, but this was part of the confusion of the film.
Recently I have started finding blogs to follow regularly. Here are three that I really enjoy dipping into:
Ultra Culture | The UK’s Greatest Movie Blog! (Check their own movie links out to find an incredible gallery of online movie gifs. Who knew they could look so stunning? Also ‘The Art of the Title’ is fascinating too.)
A Piece of Monologue: Literature, Philosophy, Criticism (Good links to lots of things about literature)
Studio Lauren (My friend’s blog in which she makes things and takes hilarious and cute pictures/videos of her daughter, Ivy)
I finally use my twitter account a lot more: if you want to find me I am @missknee.
See you on the otherside.
That’s right, it may be late (in both the time of night and for new years) but I’ve got my resolution. Perhaps not drinking rum ever again would have been a good one, or last years one could have been carried over (to eat more slowly), but this year is going to be different.
I am giving up the exclamation mark.
That’s right kids. It’s going. The punctuation mark that I use above all others. You see, somewhere in my youth when I had a livejournal account I decided that exclamation marks made text sound lively and enthusiastic. However, the other day I found this old online diary, and upon reading it began to hate my younger self. The tone was dreadful…. here is an extract:
I want an a* in english!!!!! I need one!!!! Why am i so englishly challenged?!!!! My teacher is really getting me down, I have a the urge to blame it all on her.. but its probably me. NEVERMIND! Oh ooh oooh!!! I might be going to see the dead Kennedys, no idea who they are BUT WHO CARES! I am going with maryam and Russell told me that he would be there and he was going. Hes so lovely! He used to so so soooo quiet never saying more than a couple of words, but now he chats to me endlessly! tis great! Well until he quits skating.
That was from 2004, I was sixteen. I was extremely annoying. And who the hell was Russell? Apart from confusion about who all these different men were that I used to have a crush on, as well as the awful grammar and spelling, the ‘fangirl’ style use of exclamation marks is possibly the most horrific feature of this diary entry. Thus, in the days that followed, a heightened awareness of this symbol occurred, and I realised maybe I hadn’t changed that much..? Maybe I was still that awful sixteen year old girl that had few friends and spent much of her time online chatting on forums? Maybe I was a loser…?
Before I could have some kind of life crisis, I placated myself that somethings had changed. I had been in a successful relationship, I did have many friends now, and the amount of time I spent talking on forums to people about Lord of the Rings had reduced to zero. However, that pesky exclamation mark had gone viral: it was in my texts, my emails, it even sounded like I was silently punctuating them on the end of my speech. It had got to the point where full-stops sounded so lifeless and dull that I felt obliged to exclaim everything. Like a seaman slips into cursing, I had slipped into the land of the exclamation mark. The written equivalent of shouting in someone’s face.
But it’s ok. I’ve changed. They’re gone as you may have noticed. This is going to be hard year, but I’m hoping I can manage to survive the exclamatory drought (Otherwise I might have to sign right back up to that LOTR forum and start *droooling* over Awlandough Bwoom).
Filed under: Non-Fiction
Here is a nearly final draft of the first 2,000 words of my children’s book about cancer. Please comment! Especially if you aren’t clear on anything, find anything that is inaccurate or glazes over too much, or if you aren’t clear what age group its aimed at. Or if you’re offended. Or if you like it. Or if you think of a title or if you think of any good picture ideas! P.S. All the stuff in between square brackets are ideas for pictures! And the final 500 words is the synopsis of the whole book.
Cancer. Bleurgh. Yuk. Yuk. YUK.
I don’t know why you’ve picked up this book, maybe it’s because someone you know (relatives, family, friends, friends of friends or even you) has got cancer. Maybe you’re confused by all the information everywhere, the headlines in newspapers that scream ‘STRAWBERRIES GIVE YOU CANCER’ or ‘GUINEA PIGS CURE CANCER’. I am. Because whatever they’re saying right now they’ll probably be saying the opposite in a month. And personally I don’t want to be eating strawberries one week and rubbing guinea pigs on my face the next.
[Picture of someone eating strawberries and rubbing guinea pigs on their face, there are people sat next to them staring in disgust.]
Maybe the reason is that the doctors you’ve met seem to be talking an alien language (however nice they are, they all do it sometimes). And maybe your parents just aren’t very good at translating. I mean how can adults expect someone to know what the difference is between chemotherapy and radiotherapy without being told first? It’d be like doing a crossword in Russian.
[Picture of a doctor talking medical jargon: ‘Metacarpals, tendonitis, chemotherapy, radiotherapy.]
Not to mention some of the names are more than little misleading. I bet most adults have no idea what C.T. scans or MRI scans are.
| Just in case you want to impress the lollipop lady an MRI stands for magnetic resonance imaging (Nope, me neither). It’s similar to an x-ray but it shows up all the soft stuff, like muscles, fat and skin, or the ‘soft tissues’ as doctors like to call them. |
[‘These are the soft tissues’ one doctor says to the other. The other box is marked hard tissues, they are made of granite.]
Chapter Two: What is Cancer?
Right, down to the gritty stuff. What is cancer?
Is it contagious?
No. Though there is one kind in Tasmanian devils that is. Fortunately we can’t get it. It’s still not a good idea to kiss them though.
Is it an alien life form?
Well… sometimes your body sees it that way. But technically… no.
The most simple explanation is that it’s all about cells: our bodies are made up of millions of cells that do thousands of different jobs. Inside each cell is a nucleus, which is kind of like a really simple brain and they contain genes. Doctors often call it the genetic code because it’s the instructions that tell the cell exactly what it has to do and when. It can tell the cell to divide into two, to self destruct or to sleep for years. It’s the mastermind behind the whole operation.
When people describe cells they usually talk about walls, how each cell is a brick in the wall that is your body(?!). Maybe they are like bricks… if bricks were of varying shapes and sizes and could do jobs like attacking bacteria or producing snot, rather than just holding up the roof of your house.
[Picture of man opening his shirt to show bricks. He is a terrified.]
The main thing to remember is that cancer cells aren’t special evil cells whose parents never loved them, they’re just normal cells. That’s why it’s weird when people talk about fighting cancer, because technically its part of your body so you’d be fighting yourself. And someone beating themselves up over cancer isn’t really going to help matters.
Cancer happens when the genetic code gets a mistake in it. Like when you’re making a cake and you’ve copied the ingredients out wrong. Or when you dial a wrong phone number and end up talking to a confused Australian. Occasionally this mistake will cause the cell to begin reproducing and dividing to make more cells, kind of like a broken photocopier. In most cancers these form a lump which is called a tumour (the cells, not the photocopies), and this is where the trouble starts.
Cancer from different types of cells each grow differently, I don’t mean one makes giraffe shapes and one makes stars. It’s that they grow at various speeds and affect that particular part of the body in different ways. In fact there are so many types of cancer that affect you in so many different ways, that I wonder how doctors can put it all under one name. For example brain tumours can really affect your behaviour because (if you’re anything like me) your head is full of smart brain sludge, so there isn’t really room for anything else.
By now you’re probably starting to feel paranoid about whether you or someone you know has cancer. I know that I used to panic. Whenever I had a bad headache I used to think I had a brain tumour, and whenever I got indigestion I’d be convinced I was having a heart attack.
[Picture of girl sprawled on the floor dramatically, she’s saying ‘I’ve definitely got cancer!’ People raise their eyebrows at her.]
People are always saying ‘Oooh Tracey, one in three people gets cancer you know!’ Which sounds terrifying! But you have to remember it’s just a statistic not a fact.
[A picture of three people all pointing at each other: ‘Bagsy not me!’]
Statistics are just a guesstimate from information in the recent past. There are special people called statisticians who work things like this out and even they admit that statistics are just educated guesswork. Plus the full statistic in this case is ‘one in three people get cancer at some point during their lifetime’. Almost three quarters of cancer happens to people over sixty five, and the statistic also puts all of the really nasty cancers in with the less threatening, easily treatable ones. Statistics are not any kind guarantee that something will happen, I mean look at how many people win the lottery. You’re statistically more likely to be hit by a meteorite then hit the jackpot. So next time someone comes at you with a statistic as part of their argument you can shoot their educated guesswork out of the water.
Here are some silly statistics:
The British drink 65 million cups of tea a day, so every man, woman and child drinks three cups each.[1]
On average ‘people in Southampton have the worst breath, while those in Birmingham have the best.’
‘A 2008 survey found that while on the toilet: 39% of people read, 21% of people text, and 21% of people talk (on the phone or to a family member).’[2]
Do any of these apply to you? Really?
Chapter Three: What causes cancer?
The big question that confuses scientists, as well as all us other people, is what causes cancer? People are always saying different things do this and that, but apart from a few really extreme examples (like nuclear radiation) there is no single cause of cancer. It’s not like a detective programme where a detective comes in and explains ‘the butler did it with this shoe!’ or ‘too much fine French cheese’. If Sherlock Holmes had to list all of things that may have caused the cancer then he’d have been talking for weeks.
[Sherlock Holmes lectures Watson on what caused the cancer: ‘There is no one culprit, we must arrest everyone and everything or no one at all! Grab that orange!’]
There are some things which have been proven to raise the risks of getting cancer, but even then, nothing’s certain. There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle around these things called carcinogens recently, but scientists are still unsure. Smoking is the big one; there have been loads of studies that suggest smoking makes it much more likely you’ll get lung cancer. There’s also a higher chance of certain cancers if you drink lots of alcohol. But most other stuff is only linked very loosely or is a banned substance like asbestos, which you shouldn’t come across anywhere.
There are a few cancers which are more likely if someone in your family’s had them, like breast cancer and bowel cancer (that’s your large intestines). But the genes that cause this often do other really good things, and they don’t make a huge amount of difference in the likelihood of you getting it. Doctors call it genetic predisposition, but it doesn’t just refer to cancer, if your dad can roll his tongue, then it means you are ‘genetically predisposed’ towards being able to roll your tongue too. That’s because it’s an inherited skill.
Of course, if you are genetically predisposed towards getting a certain type of cancer, then really it means that the doctors will keep an extra eye on you. You’ll get regular check-ups throughout your life, so they would be much more likely to catch it early on. And the earlier they catch it, the more easier it is to treat.
[Doctor watches patient with his third eye. The patient looks a bit freaked out.]
Chapter Four: Symptoms
How do you tell if someone’s got cancer?
Well, sometimes the lump is visible (like with skin cancer) or it can be felt, so it’s much easier to keep an eye out for those ones. It’s much more difficult to tell if it’s on the inside, but sometimes it’ll be accompanied by a lot of pain. Pain being your body’s message to your brain to stop touching that light bulb or hugging that pointy stick! But if this happens it’s not just paper cut pain: it’s the kind where your body is screaming ‘CODE RED ALERT’, so you’ll definitely know that something’s wrong. So in an odd way… pain is good… did I just say that?
Sometimes it’ll be a cold that doesn’t go away for months; my Gran had a cough that hung around for six months and my Uncle had a sore throat for almost a year before they were diagnosed. Things like permanent tiredness, being out of breath, feeling dizzy, or having a fever for a long time are sometimes other symptoms. Each kind of cancer will have different effects on your body, so there’s no easy way to be sure, but these are the sort of things people go see doctors about anyway. They’re definitely out of the ordinary when they last over a month (if ‘symptoms persist’, if you’re being clever), but often they turn out to be a virus or a cold. In these cases the doctor will give you some wonderful antibiotics. It’s only sometimes that it’s more serious and will be diagnosed as cancer.
It’s in brain tumours that the really dramatic stuff happens: they can cause fits where someone has never had any before or really nasty headaches that keep coming back. Again, most people go to a doctor, or even the hospital, when changes like this happen. They’re not little symptoms; they’re big warning messages with flashing lights and sirens.
Diagnosis: Cancer?
Diagnosing cancer can be a long process, doctors try to be as quick as they can but some tests can take weeks. Depending on your symptoms they’ll pick different tests and scans to try and work out what’s going on in your body. You might have an MRI (the magnetic resonance imaging, I mentioned earlier), or a C.T. scan where they move you back and forth through a giant ‘O’ to build up a complex 3D x-ray of your body. Or they might take a twenty four hour urine sample, which is where you have to collect all your wee in plastic bottles for a whole day. Yeuch.
They often do blood tests, which might make you feel a bit queasy, but under a microscope your blood can tell lots of stories about your body. Like fortune tellers reading tea leaves (but slightly more accurate!) doctors read the blood by:
[A fortune teller looks into her crystal ball: ‘I see your red blood cells levels are low!’]
- Doing a full blood count. This is where they count up all the red blood cells (that take oxygen around the body), the white blood cells (that fight infection) and the platelets (which clot the blood when you get a cut). The numbers tell them whether your bone marrow (the stuff in your bones that makes your blood cells) and immune system (the one that fights infections) are working properly.
- Checking your blood chemistry. By looking at the chemical levels closely doctors work out which organs or glands are overworking or not working enough, this can often point them straight to the problem!
- Then there is the blood culture, where microbiologists (people who study types of infection) study the blood to check for diseases, or even past illnesses. Because some types (like mumps) can make certain types of cancer a little more likely.
[‘Do the test tube shake!’ Two doctors shake test tubes and dance wildly.]
Biopsies are another popular choice, if by popular I mean usual, and if by choice I mean that’s what the doctors choose. They’re really essential for deciding on how fast doctors need to act and what treatment is best. Because even though there are lots of types of cancer (like lung cancer, bone cancer) each tumour has to be investigated to see if it’s benign or malignant:
- Benign is the word for something that isn’t good or evil. It’s neutral (like Switzerland). Benign tumours don’t usually grow fast, and they can’t spread to other parts of your body. The only problems you can get from this type is if it gets too big, too ugly, or too uncomfortable. Sometimes they can put pressure on your important organs and make them behave differently. If this happens they can affect the way you act or the way your body works. They might make you tired, or grouchy, or need the loo all the time. They are still serious, but bit more annoying than dangerous.
- Malignant tumours are the more serious ones. The word ‘malignant’ means something is actively bad. Which is a bit of a weird thing to say about something that doesn’t have a brain. They usually grow faster, but they can also spread around your body. So someone with a malignant tumour is a lot more likely to get more tumours. If it does spread the doctors call the original tumour the primary one, and any other ones are called secondary ones.
Oddly, doctors also refer to these as ‘cancerous’ (a.k.a. malignant) or ‘non-cancerous’ (known to its friends as ‘benign’). Sometimes I think the people who invented these terms were just trying to confuse us.
| «««««««««« Did you know that laughter is great for your health? Not only does it relieve stress but it also boosts your immune system! In India some people are members of laughter clubs where they meet up just to laugh for hours. Maybe you could start a laughter club? It’s a great excuse to swap silly stories, impressions, jokes and such. Then if a grumpy person tells you to be quiet you can claim it’s ‘all in the name of good health!’«««««««««« |
[Laughing doctors: ‘And then they will be so confused! Mwhahaha!’]
[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208058/Eight-Brits-Tantalising-titbits-worlds-79th-largest-nation-us.html
[2] http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/charlie+croker/8+out+of+10+brits/6568097/
