What might be making you a tad apprehensive, but might not, as it's too soon to tell

[Griff]

[Clodfobble]

Oh, man, I'm so sorry to hear that.

[fargon]

That sux, Fuck cancer.

[Glinda]

Thanks, guys. She's young, very fit, and I expect she'll get through this without too much drama. But, still.

Hopefully, she's got her grandma's cancer-fighting genes. In her mid-30s (same age as my niece), my mom beat thyroid cancer. In her 50s, she beat breast cancer. In her 60s, she beat breast cancer again. And throughout her life, she had multiple skin melanomas, all of which she beat. Cancer took several whacks at my mother, but she kicked its ass to the curb every time. She lived to be 91, and cancer isn't what took her. I hope K can do the same.

[Gravdigr]

[xoxoxoBruce]

My buddy went to the doctors about 6 years ago and he said you have cancer, third stage, nothing I can do, try hospice. So he tried two other doctors and they turned him away also.

His ace in the hole was he has a niece who teaches at Harvard Medical School. She sent him to a doctor doing research in the Philly area. That doctor made him sign eleventeen forms absolving the doctor and practice of any and all liability, then tried several things he’d been working on with varying degrees of success.
They did remove all the lymph nodes from one side of his body last year. He looks like shit but he seems to be hanging in there, going to work most every day.

There will never be “A cure for Cancer” because it’s a blanket term for a bunch of different diseases with different causes/effects. Besides, the guy/gal who says they’ve found a cure for cancer would be immediately lynched by vigilante doctors for drying up the research money putting thousands out of work. Oh, and Jenny McCarthy would say it’s dangerous.

Don’t give up, never give up, there’s always hope and medical progress every day.

[Glinda]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

My buddy went to the doctors about 6 years ago and he said you have cancer, third stage, nothing I can do, try hospice. So he tried two other doctors and they turned him away also.

His ace in the hole was he has a niece who teaches at Harvard Medical School. She sent him to a doctor doing research in the Philly area. That doctor made him sign eleventeen forms absolving the doctor and practice of any and all liability, then tried several things he’d been working on with varying degrees of success.
They did remove all the lymph nodes from one side of his body last year. He looks like shit but he seems to be hanging in there, going to work most every day.

There will never be “A cure for Cancer” because it’s a blanket term for a bunch of different diseases with different causes/effects. Besides, the guy/gal who says they’ve found a cure for cancer would be immediately lynched by vigilante doctors for drying up the research money putting thousands out of work. Oh, and Jenny McCarthy would say it’s dangerous.

Don’t give up, never give up, there’s always hope and medical progress every day.

Yes. Yes. Yes. ^^^All of that.^^^

I have hope for medical marijuana research, too. Now that it's possible for doctors and researchers to do actual testing and experimentation, I think we're going to find all kinds of beneficial results from the lowly weed, up to and including effective treatments (preventative/palliative/possible cures?) for various types of cancer, pain relief, and psychological issues.

Feds Call For Even More Marijuana Research After Hosting Cannabis Workshop

[BigV]

Glinda, I'm sorry to hear about the unsettling news from your niece. It sounds like she's got a lot of variables on her side, good for her. The dream does sound weird, even to a dedicated humanist like me. Obviously I have no explanations and I've had similar experiences, "Oh hey, cousin who I haven't talked to in decades, I woke last night with your name on my lips!" "Yes, I dreamt of you too!". Straight up weird.

[Glinda]

Originally Posted by BigV

Glinda, I'm sorry to hear about the unsettling news from your niece. It sounds like she's got a lot of variables on her side, good for her. The dream does sound weird, even to a dedicated humanist like me. Obviously I have no explanations and I've had similar experiences, "Oh hey, cousin who I haven't talked to in decades, I woke last night with your name on my lips!" "Yes, I dreamt of you too!". Straight up weird.

Yeah. I'm a pragmatist and not what anyone would call a spiritual person, but this dream thing is just out there.

Both my mother and her (only sibling) sister had occasional psychic (?) things happen in their lives - premonitions, sudden feelings of an emergency that panned out, and whatnot. I never have . . . until now?

I have to say, if mom and dad are keeping an eye on the family and are able to get some sort of message to me in times of need, I'm heartened and happy. I miss them terribly and I'm comforted by the idea that they're watching over me/us.

Who's to say? Maybe it's all a coincidence, but I find that pretty hard to believe, given the circumstances.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Thinking is the best way to travel but if you wake up, or just rouse to semi-consciousness, you don't know how/where/why you are there.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Glinda

I have to say, if mom and dad are keeping an eye on the family and are able to get some sort of message to me in times of need, I'm heartened and happy.

It's interesting to me how many people attribute this sort of phenomenon to dead people intervening, rather than there being some sort of psychic connection between them and the actual living person. Maybe it's less scary to see oneself as an innocent bystander to the phenomenon, rather than an active but unknowing participant. To me, if we're deciding between the two, it makes much more sense for a signal to exist between living brains than a dead soul using decidedly living-person methods--observing events, then communicating a message based on a free will desire for change--to influence a reality they're no longer a part of. Not saying either one is completely impossible, it just seems like one is a much more logical extension than the other. But that's just me.

[Glinda]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

It's interesting to me how many people attribute this sort of phenomenon to dead people intervening, rather than there being some sort of psychic connection between them and the actual living person. Maybe it's less scary to see oneself as an innocent bystander to the phenomenon, rather than an active but unknowing participant. To me, if we're deciding between the two, it makes much more sense for a signal to exist between living brains than a dead soul using decidedly living-person methods--observing events, then communicating a message based on a free will desire for change--to influence a reality they're no longer a part of. Not saying either one is completely impossible, it just seems like one is a much more logical extension than the other. But that's just me.

I get your point, but the truth is, throughout my life my niece and I never spent any time together (except during the 1.5 years when I traveled to SoCal a few days per month to take care of my folks, and even then it was only a few minutes here or there). We've never called or emailed or texted. She's an international flight attendant and my brother and his wife take care of her son when she's on the job - I've spent FAR more time with her son than with her; she and I were never "close," literally or figuratively.

Oh, we get along just fine, but there's no deep bond that might be considered "a psychic connection."

At least, I can't feature it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Since she's kin you know, but neither really friend nor foe, she can't play any role in the story your head produces. The timing could be entirely coincidental, you didn't catch what Mom was about, and Dad looking for something in your room that was probably on his computer at work doesn't make much sense.

What I want to know is why you deny having a big teddy bear?
That's nothing to be ashamed of.
Maybe you don't, maybe you just desire a big bear. Rowr.

[Glinda]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Since she's kin you know, but neither really friend nor foe, she can't play any role in the story your head produces. The timing could be entirely coincidental, you didn't catch what Mom was about, and Dad looking for something in your room that was probably on his computer at work doesn't make much sense.

What I want to know is why you deny having a big teddy bear?
That's nothing to be ashamed of.
Maybe you don't, maybe you just desire a big bear. Rowr.

Well, I've thought a lot about that.

One of the few things my mom was absolutely serious about in her declining years was that she wanted to be buried with an old teddy bear she bought in an antique store decades earlier. She said it reminded her of one she had when she was a little girl. I was happy to honor that wish, even though the bear was almost too big for the coffin. (If only she'd cared that much about her damned four karat diamond ring . . . we never did find that. )

The bear in my dream didn't look anything like the bear I buried her with, but . . .

*cue Twilight Zone theme*

[Undertoad]

Ten-years-ago-me says, our brains are designed to find patterns, but sometimes there are just patterns with no meaning. There was always a probability that a dream about a family member would happen, and then news be delivered about that same family member at about the same time. We just don't take notice of these sorts of coincidences until they happen. We can kind of dismiss the dream.

Today-me says, your value in your parents means that they *are* always "watching down on you" -- as they continue to exist and operate on you in your unconscious mind. Their impact on your life continues, and so they are affecting reality in the present time, even though they are not physically there. Since the metaphorical meaning is real, the dream is real. We dismiss it at our peril.