Showing posts with label American Cancer Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Cancer Society. Show all posts

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Lauren Hill Passed Away!

Lauren Hill, the Mount St. Joseph basketball player diagnosis with cancer passed away.

The basketball icon of Mount St. Joseph University Lauren Hill passed away yesterday. Many people are hoping that her legacy will help others achieve goals. She wanted to live her life doing something she told pride in doing.

Basketball.

She came to fame when she told the public she was diagnosis with terminal brain cancer.

She had Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma after she turned 18 in October 2013.

"To put my foot down on the floor and hear the roar of the crowd -- I just love it so much. I love basketball," Hill said after the game, where over 10,000 people attended, according to the Associated Press.

The away game was originally scheduled for later in the month, but the NCAA allowed it to be moved up due to Hill's condition. It was also held at Xavier University to accommodate the large, sold out crowd.

She had an opportunity to play a few basketball games and even graduated with high honors.

We here at Journal de Reyna send our condolences to the family of Lauren Hill.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Sex Symbol Angelina Jolie Reveals Bombshell!

Those big things that keep the junk food media focused. Actress/activist Angelina Jolie makes a shocking announcement.

The 37-year old actress and activist shocked the junk food media today with a bombshell about her health.

The international press is covering the shocking story about Jolie having her breasts removed after undergoning a preventive double mastectomy after learning she had an 87% risk of developing breast cancer. Jolie has a defective BRCA1 gene resulting in an increased risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer. She said she decided to go public about it to encourage other women to make informed medical choices.

Jolie engaged to actor Brad Pitt is the mother of six (three by Pitt and three by international adoption).

Jolie travels frequently and is currently living in France.

In a New York Times opinion piece, Jolie explains her decision was very tough but it had to be done for sake of her children. She introduced her piece to the last years of her mother, Marcheline Bertrand. The actress was once married to Jon Voight, her estranged father.

She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

We often speak of “Mommy’s mommy,” and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.

Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.

Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex.

On April 27, I finished the three months of medical procedures that the mastectomies involved. During that time I have been able to keep this private and to carry on with my work.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are a power couple.
But I am writing about it now because I hope that other women can benefit from my experience. Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action.

My own process began on Feb. 2 with a procedure known as a “nipple delay,” which rules out disease in the breast ducts behind the nipple and draws extra blood flow to the area. This causes some pain and a lot of bruising, but it increases the chance of saving the nipple.

Two weeks later I had the major surgery, where the breast tissue is removed and temporary fillers are put in place. The operation can take eight hours. You wake up with drain tubes and expanders in your breasts. It does feel like a scene out of a science-fiction film. But days after surgery you can be back to a normal life.

Nine weeks later, the final surgery is completed with the reconstruction of the breasts with an implant. There have been many advances in this procedure in the last few years, and the results can be beautiful.

I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.

It is reassuring that they see nothing that makes them uncomfortable. They can see my small scars and that’s it. Everything else is just Mommy, the same as she always was. And they know that I love them and will do anything to be with them as long as I can. On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.

I am fortunate to have a partner, Brad Pitt, who is so loving and supportive. So to anyone who has a wife or girlfriend going through this, know that you are a very important part of the transition. Brad was at the Pink Lotus Breast Center, where I was treated, for every minute of the surgeries. We managed to find moments to laugh together. We knew this was the right thing to do for our family and that it would bring us closer. And it has.

For any woman reading this, I hope it helps you to know you have options. I want to encourage every woman, especially if you have a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, to seek out the information and medical experts who can help you through this aspect of your life, and to make your own informed choices.

I acknowledge that there are many wonderful holistic doctors working on alternatives to surgery. My own regimen will be posted in due course on the Web site of the Pink Lotus Breast Center. I hope that this will be helpful to other women.
Actress Angelina Jolie makes a personal sacrifice.
Breast cancer alone kills some 458,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization, mainly in low- and middle-income countries. It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live. The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3,000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.

I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer. It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options.

Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.

The media lavishes the power couple dubbed Brangelina.

They also lavish in the ongoing feuds with her father Jon Voight and Jennifer Anniston as well.

Jolie divorced Billy Bob Thornton and was single for brief moment besides a few dates. On the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Jolie took a liking to the chemistry on set with Pitt. The media stirred rumors they were dating while Pitt was still married to comedian/actress Jennifer Anniston.

Heavily tattooed and widely considered the world's most beautiful woman,  Angelina Jolie Voight; June 4, 1975) is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011.

Jolie promotes humanitarian causes, and is noted for her work with refugees as a Special Envoy and former Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She has often been cited as the world's "most beautiful" woman, a title for which she has received substantial media attention.

We here at Journal de la Reyna send our prayers to Angelina Jolie and wish her well on her journey.

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Valarie Harper Fights For Life!

News of an uncurable cancer has Valarie Harper fighting for her life.
One of the nation's most watched television program of the 1970s, The Mary Tyler Moore Show brought to fame three successful entertainers.

Besides Mary Tyler Moore who played independent woman Mary Richards, there was her feisty boss Lou Grant  played by Ed Asner and her best friend Rhoda Morgenstern played by Valarie Harper. Towards the end of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the show created a spin-off based off of Rhoda's life in Manhattan.

The sitcom Rhoda came into the late 1970s and ended in the start of 1980.

Valerie Harper had battled lung cancer in 2009.

On March 6, 2013, it was announced on NBC's The Today Show that she has an incurable form of brain cancer and opted for a course of chemotherapy to prolong her life.

People Magazine quoted Harper in its March 8, 2013 issue as stating that tests from her January 2013 hospital stay revealed she has leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition in which cancer cells spread into the fluid-filled membrane surrounding the brain, most likely related to her previous battle with lung cancer.

According to ABC News, Harper's doctors reportedly have told her she may have just three months to live.

The nation is pouring sympathy for Valarie Harper. We here at Journal de la Reyna send our blessing to her and her family.

With tributes pouring in, many are hoping that Valarie Harper may survive another year.

While I must admit that I didn't grow up during the 1970s, but I remember watching Mary Tyler Moore on Nick at Nite during the late 1980s and 1990s. I remember the show very well.

When television was in its infancy there were only three networks ABC, CBS and NBC. The CBS program was a product of James L. Brooks.

Brooks is famous for not just The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but comedy sketch show The Tracey Ullman Show and the longtime animated sitcom The Simpsons.

Valerie Harper (born August 22, 1939) is an American actress, known for her roles as Rhoda Morgenstern on the 1970s television series The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off Rhoda, and later as Valerie Hogan on Valerie (later The Hogan Family).

Last week the nation lost famed actress Bonnie Franklin. Bonnie starred in One Day at a Time as Ann Romano, a divorced mother who moves to Indianapolis with her two teenage daughters Julie and Barbara Cooper (Mackenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli) with Dwayne Schneider (Pat Harrington) as their building superintendent. The sitcom came on in the mid-1970s at the peak of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

I guess Valarie wanted to get the news out there in regards to the passing of her fellow actress/friend.

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Hugo Chávez Passes Away!

The world mourns Hugo Chavez.

The president of Venezuela has died. The often brash and colorful leader of the Republic of Venezuela passed away according to multiple sources. He was struggling with cancer.

It held off his successful reelection for his fourth term. Chavez stated that he was recovering from an operation to remove an abscessed tumor with cancerous cells. He required a second operation in December 2012. Chavez was to have been sworn in on January 10, 2013, but the National Assembly of Venezuela agreed to postpone the inauguration to allow him time to recuperate and return from a third medical treatment trip to Cuba.

It was reported by the Associated Press.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez was a fighter. The former paratroop commander and fiery populist waged continual battle for his socialist ideals and outsmarted his rivals time and again, defeating a coup attempt, winning re-election three times and using his country's vast oil wealth to his political advantage.

A self-described "subversive," Chavez fashioned himself after the 19th Century independence leader Simon Bolivar and renamed his country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

He called himself a "humble soldier" in a battle for socialism and against U.S. hegemony. He thrived on confrontation with Washington and his political opponents at home, and used those conflicts to rally his followers.

Almost the only adversary it seemed he couldn't beat was cancer. He died Tuesday in Caracas at 4:25 local time after his prolonged illness. He was 58.

During more than 14 years in office, his leftist politics and grandiose style polarized Venezuelans. The barrel-chested leader electrified crowds with his booming voice, and won admiration among the poor with government social programs and a folksy, nationalistic style.

His opponents seethed at the larger-than-life character who demonized them on television and ordered the expropriation of farms and businesses. Many in the middle class cringed at his bombast and complained about rising crime, soaring inflation and government economic controls.


Chavez used his country's vast oil wealth to launch social programs that included state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics and education programs. Poverty declined during Chavez's presidency amid a historic boom in oil earnings, but critics said he failed to use the windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the country's economy.

Inflation soared and the homicide rate rose to among the highest in the world

Before his struggle with cancer, he appeared on television almost daily, frequently speaking for hours and breaking into song or philosophical discourse. He often wore the bright red of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or the fatigues and red beret of his army days. He had donned the same uniform in 1992 while leading an ill-fated coup attempt that first landed him in jail and then launched his political career.

The rest of the world watched as the country with the world's biggest proven oil reserves took a turn to the left under its unconventional leader, who considered himself above all else a revolutionary.

"I'm still a subversive," the president told The Associated Press in a 2007 interview, recalling his days as a rebel soldier. "I think the entire world has to be subverted."

Chavez was a master communicator and savvy political strategist, and managed to turn his struggle against cancer into a rallying cry, until the illness finally defeated him.

From the start, he billed himself as the heir of Bolivar, who led much of South America to independence. He often spoke beneath a portrait of Bolivar and presented replicas of the liberator's sword to allies. He built a soaring mausoleum in Caracas to house the remains of "El Libertador."

Chavez also was inspired by his mentor Fidel Castro and took on the Cuban leader's role as Washington's chief antagonist in the Western Hemisphere after the ailing Castro turned over the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006. Like Castro, Chavez vilified U.S.-style capitalism while forming alliances throughout Latin America and with distant powers such as Russia, China and Iran.

Supporters eagerly raised Chavez to the pantheon of revolutionary legends ranging from Castro to Argentine-born rebel Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Chavez nurtured that cult of personality, and even as he stayed out of sight for long stretches fighting cancer, his out-sized image appeared on buildings and billboard throughout Venezuela. The airwaves boomed with his baritone mantra: "I am a nation." Supporters carried posters and wore masks of his eyes, chanting, "I am Chavez."

In the battles Chavez waged at home and abroad, he captivated his base by championing his country's poor.

"This is the path: the hard, long path, filled with doubts, filled with errors, filled with bitterness, but this is the path," Chavez told his backers in 2011. "The path is this: socialism."

On television, he would lambast his opponents as "oligarchs," scold his aides, tell jokes, reminisce about his childhood, lecture Venezuelans on socialism and make sudden announcements, such as expelling the U.S. ambassador or ordering tanks to Venezuela's border with Colombia.

Chavez carried his in-your-face style to the world stage as well. In a 2006 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he called President George W. Bush the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulfur after the U.S. president's address.

At a summit in 2007, he repeatedly called Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a fascist, prompting Spain's King Juan Carlos to snap, "Why don't you shut up?"

Critics saw Chavez as a typical Latin American caudillo, a strongman who ruled through force of personality and showed disdain for democratic rules. Chavez concentrated power in his hands with allies who dominated the congress and justices who controlled the Supreme Court.

"El Comandante," as he was known, insisted Venezuela remained a vibrant democracy and denied charges that he sought to restrict free speech. But some opponents faced criminal charges and were driven into exile. His government forced the opposition-aligned television channel, RCTV, off the air by refusing to renew its license.

While Chavez trumpeted plans for communes and an egalitarian society, his rhetoric regularly conflicted with reality. Despite government seizures of companies and farmland, the balance between Venezuela's public and private sectors changed little during his presidency.

Nonetheless, Chavez maintained a core of supporters who stayed loyal to their "comandante" until the end.

"Chavez masterfully exploits the disenchantment of people who feel excluded ... and he feeds on controversy whenever he can," Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka wrote in their book "Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President."

Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was born on July 28, 1954, in the rural town of Sabaneta in Venezuela's western plains. He was the son of a schoolteacher father and was the second of six brothers. His mother was also a schoolteacher who met her husband at age 16.
Conservatives hated Hugo Chavez as much as they hate President Barack Obama.
Hugo and his older brother Adan grew up with their grandmother, Rosa Ines, in a home with a dirt floor, mud walls and a roof made of palm fronds.

Chavez was a fine baseball player and hoped he might one day pitch in the U.S. major leagues. When he joined the military at age 17, he aimed to keep honing his baseball skills in the capital.

But between his army duties and drills, the young soldier immersed himself in the history of Bolivar and other Venezuelan heroes who had overthrown Spanish rule, and his political ideas began to take shape.

Chavez burst into public view in 1992 as a paratroop commander leading a military rebellion that brought tanks to the presidential palace. When the coup collapsed, Chavez was allowed to make a televised statement in which he declared that his movement had failed "for now." The speech, and those two defiant words, launched his career, searing his image into the memory of Venezuelans.

Two years later, he and other coup prisoners were released from prison, and President Rafael Caldera dropped the charges against them.

After organizing a new party, Chavez ran for president in 1998, pledging to clean up Venezuela's entrenched corruption and shatter its traditional two-party system. At age 44, he became the country's youngest president in four decades of democracy with 56 percent of the vote.

After he took office on Feb. 2, 1999, Chavez called for a new constitution, and an assembly filled with his allies drafted the document. Among various changes, it lengthened presidential terms from five years to six and changed the country's name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

By 2000, his increasingly confrontational style and close ties to Cuba disenchanted many of the middle-class supporters who voted for him, and the next several years saw bold attempts by opponents to dislodge him from power.

In 2002, he survived a short-lived coup, which began after large anti-Chavez street protests ended in shootings and bloodshed. Dissident military officers detained the president and announced he had resigned.

But within two days, he returned to power with the help of military loyalists amid massive protests by his supporters.

Chavez emerged a stronger president.

He defeated an opposition-led strike that paralyzed the country's oil industry and fired thousands of state oil company employees.

The coup also turned Chavez more decidedly against the U.S. government, which had swiftly recognized the provisional leader who briefly replaced him. He created political and trade alliances that excluded the U.S., and he cozied up to Iran and Syria in large part, it seemed, due to their shared antagonism toward the U.S. government. Despite the souring relationship, Chavez kept selling the bulk of Venezuela's oil to the United States.

By 2005, Chavez was espousing a new, vaguely defined "21st-century socialism." Yet the agenda didn't involve a sudden overhaul to the country's economic order, and some businesspeople continued to prosper.

Those with lucrative ties to the government came to be known as the "Bolivarian bourgeoisie."

After easily winning re-election in 2006, Chavez began calling for a "multi-polar world" free of U.S. domination, part of an expanded international agenda. He boosted oil shipments to China, set up joint factories with Iran to produce tractors and cars, and sealed arms deals with Russia for assault rifles, helicopters and fighter jets. He focused on building alliances throughout Latin America and injected new energy into the region's left. Allies were elected in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and other countries.

Chavez also cemented relationships with island countries in the Caribbean by selling them oil on preferential terms while severing ties with Israel, supporting the Palestinian cause and backing Iran's right to a nuclear energy program.

All the while, Chavez emphasized that it was necessary to prepare for any potential conflict with the "empire," his term for the United States.

He told the AP in 2007 that he loved the movie "Gladiator."

"It's confronting the empire, and confronting evil. ... And you end up relating to that gladiator," Chavez said as he drove across Venezuela's southern plains.

He said he felt a deep connection to those plains where he grew up, and that when died he hoped to be buried in the savanna.

"A man from the plains, from these great open spaces ... tends to be a nomad, tends not to see barriers. What you see is the horizon," Chavez said.

Running a revolution ultimately left little time for a personal life. His second marriage, to journalist Marisabel Rodriguez, deteriorated in the early years of his presidency, and they divorced in 2004. In addition to their one daughter, Rosines, Chavez had three children from his first marriage, which ended before he ran for office. His daughters Maria and Rosa often appeared at his side at official events and during his trips. He had one son, Hugo Rafael Chavez.

After he was diagnosed with cancer in June 2011, he acknowledged that he had recklessly neglected his health. He had taken to staying up late and drinking as many as 40 cups of coffee a day. He regularly summoned his Cabinet ministers to the presidential palace late at night.

Even as he appeared with head shaved while undergoing chemotherapy, he never revealed the exact location of tumors that were removed from his pelvic region, or the exact type of cancer.

Chavez exerted himself for one final election campaign in 2012 after saying tests showed he was cancer-free, and defeated younger challenger Henrique Capriles. With another six-year term in hand, he promised to keep pressing for revolutionary changes.

But two months later, he went to Cuba for a fourth cancer-related surgery, blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane.

After a 10-week absence, the government announced that Chavez had returned to Venezuela and was being treated at a military hospital in Caracas. He was never seen again in public.

In his final years, Chavez frequently said Venezuela was well on its way toward socialism, and at least in his mind, there was no turning back.

His political movement, however, was mostly a one-man phenomenon. Only three days before his final surgery, Chavez named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his chosen successor.

Now, it will be up to Venezuelans to determine whether the Chavismo movement can survive, and how it will evolve, without the leader who inspired it.

Copyright © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

New guidelines for mammograms could hurt black women.

New recommendations from the government on when women should begin getting mammograms and how often they should done could have a very negative effect on black women as they have a higher rate of death due to late detection. Read more on this and the American Cancer Society's guidelines om mammograms here:

http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/blacknewsblackviews.html

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