I didn't see this on the RSS feed, though maybe it just hasn't made it yet, but there was a good article in the NY Times about the pressure on cancer patients to "be postitive" all the time.

There have been some comments made in this forum recently about someone's attitude towards their cancer battle being unecessarily negative. As a researcher and follower of research on positive pscyhology, I am the first one to believe that an optimistic attitude can (sometimes) make a difference in outcomes. But I also think it's important to allow people on the cancer "journey" (a trip no one wants to take) to go through their dark nights of the soul, especially when facing heavy things like disability and recurrences. It's just possible that those dark times and "negative" emotions are as rich a part of our human experience as the postitive.

It would be great if everyone, before posting advice about attitude to other people here, could look at this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/health/01stoical.html?pagewanted=1

I think this is a good thing for people to read. It wasn't picked up on the OCF RSS feed because it is not specific to oral cancer.

Nelie:

Thanks for posting the article. I found it to be very interesting.

Nelie,

Thanks for sharing that article. It was a worthwhile read.

Jerry

Nellie, I enjoyed the read. Serveral good things to think about. It is so easy for me to feel somewhat negative at times as I struggle to find my way through getting treatment so I really needed to read this one. Thanks, Angel

I saw that it got added to the RSS feed yesterday. Thanks Brian! (by the way I wasn't trying to criticize when I said I didn't see it, just wanted to make clear I had looked before posting).

I don't know if this one got caught either. It talks about a study (observational study only) rlating heavy cell phone use to three cancers--one of which is cancer of the parotid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/health/03well.html?ref=health

We are always happy to have people find article which are of importance that we have missed. While I screen for articles along with Sheldon, neither of us is doing this full time, and even with our broad search parameters we miss things. We try to update the news database at least 4 times a week, more if the number of found articles is great. Most of the journals that get searched are from the world of medicine, and those which fall outside the parameters of specifically being about oral cancers like the first one that you put up offer valuable insights, but certainly might get missed because of their being outside the realm of oral cancers specifically. But never hesitate to bring something up that any of you find that might be important to others. It just has to come from a credible source, and be more than very preliminary ideas, (of which there are many in the world of research that never pan out.)

Well I'm pretty avid reader of the NY Times--except during the really heavy-workload times of the academic year (I am now on summer break though I do have a few work related projects so I have more time). So I'll keep mentioning if I see something.

You do nice work in here for us Nelie. Thank You and keep up with the summer break if you get one. LOL Have a good day.

Thanks Jim. Unfortunately, much of my summer break may involve more surgery for the trismus and recovery from it. That is, if I get to the point when I'm sure this surgery is the right thing to do. It's too bad because right now I am thinking I'd also enjoy just havng a couple of months to work in the garden....