Helping Those Who Need It Most

January 7th, 2011

I woke up early this morning to retrieve Big Boy from Children’s Hospital. We’re so fortunate. In and out world-class medical care just 30 minutes from our home.  At Children’s, they treat anybody – from the children of DC’s power brokers to the poorest kids in our nation’s capital.  As one of the doctors there said to me yesterday,

“We’re $50 Million in the hole this year. We can be doing fine financially, but then one bone marrow transplant for a patient without insurance will set us back. And can you really say no to a child with cancer?”

And while I give thanks for the incredible staff at Children’s National Medical Center, I also thought of others with cancer – adults. Do people say no to them?

According to my friend Susan from ToddlerPlanet, they do. Susan has world class medical care and  tons of resources at her disposal to fight her fourth recurrence of cancer in four years. She just found out about this latest round, and while she’s intent on beating this back, her focus is also on a very personal campaign: getting lymphedema sleeves onto the arms of cancer patients.

If you haven’t heard of lymphedema sleeves, you’re not alone. In fact, when I first met Susan at BlogHer this summer, I gasped and said, “You blog about everything! How come you never blogged that you have tattooed arms??!!”

Well, this brilliant astrophysicist does not have tattooed arms – but she does have lymphedema sleeves, which reduce the pain and swelling associated with cancer – while looking like radical fashion accessories.

Read more here.

— Lynn

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The Hypocrisy of Cancer

March 7th, 2010

“Thank God for those writers, activists, and demonstrators who have the courage to dig around in the manure and expose hypocrisy,” my rector said this morning from the pulpit.

That was it!

I could have blogged about my contempt for pinkwashing, defined here as “the term used to describe the activities of companies and groups that position themselves as leaders in the struggle to eradicate breast cancer while engaging in practices that may be contributing to rising rates of the disease.” Or I could have asked why the many  environmental links to cancer are not more widely acknowledged in our society.

But then again, why did I want to risk being pegged yet again as just  one of those “hysterical Mommy bloggers?”

Sadly, many people shrug off cancer, perhaps as a means of coping with the fear of this horrible disease.  “Everything causes cancer!,” they’ll joke. “We can’t live in bubble wrap,” they’ll say.

It  doesn’t have to be this way. If we would only clean up our environment, ban known carcinogens from use in our personal care products and household cleansers, and prevent exterminators from spraying pesticides inside homes,  we’d be well on our way to reducing and preventing the increasing numbers of breast cancers.

Don’t just take it from me. Listen to what these experts say about environmental linkages to cancer. And please check out the round-up of posts on this topic from the other members of the Green Moms Carnival. Among them are some experts as well. We’re posting Monday over at Nature Moms.

  • The Breast Cancer Fund: “No more than 10 percent of breast cancers are genetic, and science points to toxic chemicals and radiation as factors in the sharp rise of breast cancer incidence.”

    • Dr. Devra Lee Davis and the Environmental Health Trust. Dr. Davis says, “We should…find  safer substitutes for the things we use every day that appear to be toxic, according to their labels…For nearly a century, the following things have been understood to cause cancer: tobacco, benzene, asbestos, tars, sunlight, hormones, and radiation.”

    To be kept informed of the latest developments in the fight against cancer-causing environmental contaminants, follow these groups:

    — Lynn

    Copyright OrganicMania 2010

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