Lani

This board serves many different purposes for many different people. I, too, like to post information--because, for me, information is freedom.

Most people with cancer sense a lack of power to alter how things are going--some grab onto promises from charlatans, others to micromanaging their nutrition, others keep incredibly cataloged libraries of their test results, others hide their head in the sand and hope it will go away. Each reaction is entirely valid and is merely a way people can adapt to the situation . Some utilize one's powers more constructively than others, but all are valid for that individual. Thinking about what caused one's cancer, even blaming others, is normal and can be very constructive if it causes one to seek information, raise consciousness and perhaps effect of change of one or many persons behavior.

others don't

I have sensed from your posts, that you are someone who is TRULY trying to help others by posting whatever you find that you think might help. And, indeed, your posts have helped others in many ways. There are those who
"lurk" hoping to prepare themselves should they recur, those who have recur and have run out of options and others who just hope to understand more about what is being learned about what afflicts them. Even when the terms are technical and they only read the title and last lines (and now look to see if it was indeed done in a her2+ cell line) they have added to their arsenal of weapons and can print it out and have something to ask their oncologist. I have also sensed that you are truly happy to post things you have just found and feel are really "juicy" and pertinent!

Many breast cancer oncologists have told me they regrettably don't have the time to research the publications about breast cancer as extensively as we do--they have busy practices , research grants to write, clinical trials to participate in. They also, even in the university, cannot access many articles without paying the $20 for 24 hours extortion charge placed by conglomerate "publishers" on the results of taxpayer-paid research. But don't get me started on that.

One oncologist who is writing a chapter in a book, asked me what resources I went to on the web to find the articles I brought to her attention
as she found them especially interesting.

RHONDA PLEASE KEEP POSTING YOUR INFORMATION as it helps this transfer of knowledge move forward, and with that perhaps the "turning on of the little lightbulb in the head" of someone who may really make some
breakthroughs in this very complicated nasty parasitic-like disease, and empowers patients even if the words are technical. If more people searched the incredible volume of things published on the web (including the nutritional, the alternative, the psychological, etc) and actively posted then to this site I think we can speed up the rate of moving research from bench to clinic (by getting those at the bench in touch with what others at the bench have done) and by getting those in the clinic knowledgeable about what others in the clinic have found (even if it is drugs which have to be used "off-label")

For those who are not technical-word phobic, please post information on laws regarding insurance issues, advocacy training, etc. Whatever you feel comfortable with. BUT POST INFORMATION.

There is, of course, the other function of the site, which it fulfills so well. ie, giving people a place to commiserate, learn from others personal experience, learn how to ask the right questions, change oncologists, get on a vaccine trial, and of course VENT.

Now its time for me to stop being so verbose myself!

So Rhonda, KEEP IT UP!