Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Anyone know ANYTHING about Rhabdomyosarcoma???

I finally finished my cell bio paper, Effects of A1-GPIbα Gain-of-Function Mutations on Platelet Interactions in Type-2B and Platelet-Type von Willebrand Disease, and after a day off yesterday to recover from strep throat I'm already behind on my next project, the pathology and diagnosis of Rhabdomosarcoma, a pediatric cancer so obscure we can't find it mentioned in any of the major cancer research books! Seriously, if you know ANYTHING about this disease, I will love you forever!

Man, I hate this point in the semester when everything is suddenly due! The strep did not make it any easier, but I'm excited that I'm still on my feet and working strong. This is, after all, the point last year where my brain stopped functioning, I ran into a wall, and the ER doctors got their annual opportunity to get all excited about rare blood diseases. I feel really good, I'm dropping weight steadily even on my stress diet of dougnuts, ice cream, curry, and carrot sticks (which I don't think really balances itself out, sadly) and I can't friggin' wait for the weekend, when I'll finally have a chance to play with the rescue ponies. Two weeks is WAY too long for Kalhua to go unworked, although it looks like she's been behaving well enough to get groomed on volunteer days so at least she's getting attention! I should also put Isis to work a bit; she can't go above the walk and she can't be ridden but she's incredably smart so... more groundwork, more trust issue work. And I said I'd help get Honey more comfortable being handled so she could get a massage. She's another sweetheart of a mare, Thoroughbred, who understandably doesn't believe that people are here to help. I'm glad that two new people are being evaluated to ride, because I can't be the only one who actually does it!

If anyone wants horsey time... I'd really like an excuse to pull out some of the older/ safer horses and love on them!!!

Alright, time for some calculus...

3 comments:

Lorin Decker Buck said...

What do you want to know? My son has rhabdomyosarcoma. I think I've read everything I can find (and understand). Have you gone to the National Cancer Institute Web site?

Jen and (Dee in spirit) said...

My partner has rhabdomyosarcoma, we are writting up a blog at http://rhabdomyosarcomacancer.blogspot.com/ about her battle.
We found most of our information at St. Jude's (http://www.stjude.org) they do a ton of research on it and have an amazing 75% cure rate (last I checked).

Amy.mangos said...

Thank you both for replying! If you're willing to let us share some of your experiences with any aspect of this cancer, please let me know! This is for a class on the molecular and cellular basis of cancer, so our focus has been very... microscopic. The point of attending this conference is to learn (and share) more about the macroscopic and social parts of the disease. E-mail: amy.mangos@gmail.com

I'll check out the National Cancer Institute and St. Jude pages :-) Honestly, we're just starting our real research because our lab proposals (and my paper on vWD) were due last week. But it was frustrating that our massive library didn't even have a recent edition of a cancer encyclopedia! Football took the library's money so they could re=do the stadium, grumble grumble grumble good think molecular biology gets its own funding from, ya know, research grants and awards by having some of the top labs in the country...