New radiation and MRI machine could revolutionize cancer treatment

Alberta-made Linac-MR machine combining MRI and radiation could revolutionize cancer treatments

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Mind blowing cancer cure!!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/11/revolutionary-gene-therapy-offers-hope-untreatable-cancers

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‘Don’t waste time’: War Horse composer Adrian Sutton on living with an incurable cancer diagnosis

A devastating flash-flood recently swept away the pleasant landscape of my imagined future: an incurable cancer diagnosis. Bastard. How to process that news? My mind has lurched for two months. Obviously, this is all some terrible mistake. I have a healthy lifestyle. You’ve got the wrong guy. Come on, there’s more living to do, more music to write. But such pleadings – to whom or what I don’t know – rebound from a stone wall. The reality is immutable.

In his book Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman highlights the obsession we have with the future: always trying to lasso it from the present, writing to-do lists around it, deluding ourselves that we have it all under control. That’s been me, right there … years spent dreaming of the pieces I’d yet to write and record; tweaking my studio setup to optimise future workflow; stacking a tower of useless to-do-list cruft.

In truth though, we all have limited time – and resources. How to make best use of them? In my situation, there’s only one answer: avoid egregious waste of both time and energy ruminating on things I can’t change. Instead, I can choose how I react to the facts – and I’m choosing not to be a victim.

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Blood test accurately detects cancer.

EDMONTON — Results from a study of a blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer suggest that it is accurate enough to be used as a screening tool among people at higher risk of the disease, including those who are not symptomatic.

In a paper published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology Friday, researchers reported that the test accurately detected cancer, often before any symptoms were present, and delivered a very low false-positive rate.

The test also successfully predicted where in the body the cancer is located with a high degree of accuracy (88.7 per cent of cases) – a development researchers say can help doctors narrow down diagnostic testing and confirm a diagnosis sooner.

The test, developed by U.S.-based company Grail, detects chemical changes in fragments of genetic code – known as cell-free DNA (cfDNA) – that leak from tumours and other cells into the bloodstream.

Using genomic sequencing, the test can detect chemical changes to the DNA called methylation that control gene expression. A classifier developed with machine learning then uses the results to detect abnormal methylation patterns that suggest cancer is present and narrow down where in the body those abnormalities lie.

The company promises results will be made available within 10 business days from the time the sample reaches the lab.

During the study, scientists analyzed 2,823 people with the disease and 1,254 people without. The test wrongly detected cancer in only 0.5 per cent of cases.

In solid tumours that do not have any screening options, like those associated with oesophageal, liver and pancreatic cancers, the ability to generate a positive test result was twice as high (65.6 per cent) as cancers with solid tumours that do have screening options, such as breast, bowel, cervical or prostate cancers.

The test’s ability to detect cancer in the blood such as lymphoma and myeloma, however, was 55.1 per cent.

Researchers will continue to collect data from the test in large studies across the U.S. The company has also partnered with the U.K.’s National Health Service to pilot the test in approximately 165,000 eligible patients, starting later this year.

(Nicole Bogart, CTV News)

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Carpe diem.

I was browsing through my archive and thought the entry from April 2011 was worth re-posting, especially given the almost Kafkaesque time we now live in. I took my own advice about ensuring “that your conscious hours are spent in activity that makes you tingle” and spent some time shovelling out a pretty decent skating oval-8 and rink out front. Even though the temp is in the minus double digit Celsius range, the sun was beating down from a bluebird sky so it did not seem at all that cold. I got in a solid skate before tweaking something in my right groin. Nothing serious, but enough to recognize it was time to quit. Might get out for a wolf moon skate tonight, the last few nights have been spectacular. Carpe diem!

When your peers die, and especially when they predecease their parents, it really sharpens your focus.  My teenage folk dancing partner died a few weeks ago.  Pancreatic cancer.  There it is again, that insidious disease that continues cutting its inexorable swath thru our population.  We lost touch decades ago, well, not really lost touch.  We just moved on with our lives, and her life went one way, I went another.  But looking at the photos posted on her Facebook memorial page (great job by the way, whoever compiled that) makes me realize how important it is to “carpe diem”.  Seize the day!  From the looks of the memories posted, she did exactly that.  Doesn’t strike me that she wasted her life following sitcoms or engaging in other similarly emotionless activities.  We have a finite amount of time on earth, what comes after is so completely unknown that it behooves you to ensure that your conscious hours are spent in activity that makes you tingle.  Stuff that gives you a buzz.  Moments that you can bring forth in bummer times  to replace that depression with light, because lets face it, your life can’t be one non-stop hit parade.  So whatever it is, get out there and make it happen.  Or at least pursue it.  Because one day the reaper will knock on my door too, and when that time comes I want to be able to say, go ahead dude, because I have no regrets.  Rest in peace Virge-Kai.

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