It’s already mid-December and I have no idea where this year went to. It’s funny how quickly the days and weeks fly by as you get older. If I was 7, these last few weeks before the end of the year would seem to take forever – but already I’m grappling with how I’m going to get everything done I… Read more »
Not sure if many of you saw the recent study that shows an increased risk of melanoma for white wine drinkers. I tried to find the least technical article to break down what the study results actually say, and I think this one from Forbes does the trick. In summary, the writer of the article (who’s a professor of biomedical… Read more »
This Thursday in the U.S. is our Thanksgiving holiday. Generally, it’s the time of year when friends and families gather together to eat a massive amount of turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie and then watch American football. But it’s also the time of year when you’re supposed to reflect on your blessings and give thanks. I’m not saying that every… Read more »
In my previous post, I talked about how nanoparticles can deliver a payload of chemotherapy drugs in a targeted way, bypassing the anything other than cancer cells. Well, there’s another very interesting line of research involving nanoparticles. Nanoparticles are small, but they’re still larger than most human cells. But they are the perfect size to infiltrate cancer cells, which are… Read more »
OK, so y’all know I’m a science nerd, right? And there’s some really interesting research being done with nanoparticles to treat cancer. But I was always a little hazy on how exactly all of that worked. How did the nanoparticles find and target only the cancer cells and leave the regular cells untouched? I came across an explanation and thought… Read more »
The days are getting shorter in the Northern Hemisphere and this time of year always makes me sleepy. But a recent post on Facebook by a husband and wife account detailing her battle with Stage Four breast cancer got me thinking… You see, a few years ago at the tail end of my time in San Antonio, I suffered from… Read more »
I’m kind of a workaholic. Attribute that to my mom, who worked tirelessly from the time she was young until just a few years ago. She held a variety of low-paying grunt jobs while I was growing up – dishwasher, assembly in a factory – the kind of jobs that most normal people would call in sick on a regular… Read more »
As readers of the blog may know, I live in Austin. Our local television station ran a story about a new radiation-based skin cancer treatment that sounded interesting. The treatment is an FDA approved non-surgical treatment called Superficial Radiation. The claim is that the treatment destroys skin cancer cells without damaging healthy tissue. For maximum effectiveness, you need 8-10 treatments, which last… Read more »
I’ve spent the past five days running around New York City, a combination of fun and work purposes. Over the weekend, my hubby and I spent time on the Lower East Side – hanging out at various little cozy restaurants, drinking in some classy and not-so-classy bars, walking all over lower Manhattan. Then on Monday, with work duties looming, we… Read more »
I just read a discouraging article that notes that patients with darker skin tones have a much worse chance of their melanoma becoming fatal. The article references a study performed by Case Western Reserve University (incidentally close to my hometown in Ohio and a very well-respected institution) that found that patients with black skin had the worst survival rates for melanoma…. Read more »