Proof Positivity: I Love To Read

I love to read.  Since having kids I haven’t had much time for that.  I found a site that kind of helps me with that though.  DailLit sends small portions of the book for you to read to your email.  Some books are completely free and some you have to pay for to finish.  I am currently reading “Letters To A Young Journalist”  By: Samuel Freedman  Daily Lit is something I just started and since I can’t afford to spend money on books the way I used to it works out wonderfully for me.

I signed up for the Oprah.Com community.  So far I’m not real fond of it.  My computer runs slow when I am on the site,  to blog on the site isn’t very fun.  You can’t add credibility to your posts by linking, you can’t add pictures, and it takes forever to get completed on anything.  Love Oprah, not loving her site.

We haven’t been watching any TV lately.  We have found some really great sites to appease that want of television though.  Hulu has a lot of great movies and a lot of current TV shows it is sponsored through commercials but there aren’t many.  There are ratings on shows and movies so you know what you’re getting in to. 

Fancast is really fun.  I spent an afternoon on the original Wonder Woman series with Linda Carter, ALF, and Ace of Cakes to name a few.  The movies ran real slow but the old TV shows more than made up for it.

 

Research Help For A Rare Form Of Cancer

When her doctor told her she had breast cancer, Sonja Draught thought detecting it early had greatly enhanced her odds of living because that is the case for most forms of cancer. But then she learned she was battling a rare and aggressive form of the disease: triple negative breast cancer.

“When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I immediately thought early detection had really saved my life. Then I was told I had the ‘bad’ cancer,” said Draught of Warren, Ohio. “I immediately thought how can all this research, awareness and donations be going to breast cancer and I’m being told my prognosis is bad at stage 1?”

To help women like Draught, Susan G. Komen for the Cure(R) announced it is teaming up with the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation (TNBCF) to fund breakthrough life-saving research about this form of the disease.

At the recent Triple Negative Breast Cancer Symposium in San Antonio, Hala Moddelmog, Komen for the Cure president and CEO, along with Hayley Dinerman, TNBCF director of operations and Allison Axenrod, TNBCF executive director, signed an agreement to help launch The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Promise Grant Co-Funded by the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation.

“This type of research is exactly what we’ve been looking for,” said Dinerman. “By co-funding a Promise Grant with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, we can be certain that the project chosen will be an important, multi-faceted, multi-institutional triple negative-specific research initiative with real world clinical impact.”

TNBCF’s initial $500,000 contribution marks the first time a nonprofit partner has co-funded one of Komen’s groundbreaking Promise Grants. Worth $7.5 million over five years, Promise Grants are designed to bring clinical researchers and basic scientists together to deliver new treatments for patients as quickly as possible.

To date, doctors know that most breast cancers are characterized by the presence of three receptors (proteins found inside or on the surface of breast cells): estrogen, progesterone and HER2. These receptors are not “expressed” in women with triple negative breast cancer – hence the name.  Since most treatments available today are aimed at those receptors, TNBC is difficult to treat, and the tumors are often more aggressive. TNBC represents only 15 percent of all breast cancer cases but accounts for as many as 25 percent of all breast cancer deaths.

To accelerate our understanding of this rare form of the disease, a “think tank” of 31 researchers from leading cancer institutions worldwide was convened by Komen and TNBCF at the symposium in December.

Led by Dr. Eric Winer, Komen chief scientific advisor and TNBCF advisory board member, as well as Drs. Lisa Carey and George Sledge, also of the TNBCF advisory board, the symposium focused on topics ranging from how well TNBC responds to traditional chemotherapy to the unique ways TNBC spreads through the body.

“This unprecedented partnership with TNBCF is critical in the drive to better understand this difficult-to-treat type of breast cancer,” Moddelmog said. “The more resources we devote to triple negative breast cancer, the sooner we’ll find a cure.”

 

Parent Help For Kids With Autism

 

Autism Support Network and Parenting Special Needs Magazine  announced an alliance to help foster support and greater guidance for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The agreement syndicates Parenting Special Needs Magazine’s content to the thousands of members from around the world actively engaged in Autism Support Network’s free online community.

 

Brian Field, co-founder of Autism Support Network, stated, “Our members constantly seek additional direction and guidance in navigating the often difficult pathways of raising a child with autism. The practical tips and real-life lessons – shared from others that have gone through it – that Parenting Special Needs Magazine is able to deliver to our members will provide valuable insights across our community.”

 

“We are proud to be associated with Autism Support Network and its broad global audience,” said Chantai Snellgrove, founder and editorial director of Parenting Special Needs Magazine. “Our hope is by bringing together the ‘worldwide’ parenting special needs community, we will become stronger, using one voice to raise awareness and advocate for our children. Gaining tolerance and acceptance for all individuals with different abilities is a key mission of ours.”

 

Today 1 in 150 children are diagnosed with autism, with a new case diagnosed every 20 minutes and is the fastest-growing developmental disability in the United States today. More children will be diagnosed with autism this year than with AIDS, diabetes and cancer combined. Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction, problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, and unusual, repetitive, or severely limited activities and interests. Other ASDs include Asperger syndrome, Rett syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (usually referred to as PDD-NOS). Males are four times more likely to have autism than females.

 

PRNewswire