Hey, Jude

I have recently received email from a perfectly delightful new relative. My nephew, Eric, a 21 year-old marine, was married in 2004 to a bright and attractive young woman. Not long before his deployment, a beautiful baby girl was born.

I can imagine few things more stressful than separation from the one that makes your heart beat -- your new wife or your new husband – at this formulative time of life. Still, she seems to be doing well. Neither, her baby, obviously the light of her life, nor Eric’s deployment is holding her back. She recently received her Real Estate license and has set about building her career.

All of her activities as a professional and as a mom haven’t prevented her from maintaining a lively written and, for all I know, verbal communication with those of us lucky enough to tease it out of her. This Christmas she crafted one of those this-is-what-we’ve-been-doing letters and slipped it into her holiday cards, along with the latest pictures of her baby.

In truth, I don’t know her very well, but I’m guessing, my nephew is a very lucky young man, that is, if we can get him home safely.

Colonoscopy

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States.

My mother died when she was sixty-three years old of colon cancer. She had smoked at many times during her life, though I think she may also have been genetically vulnerable to gastrointestinal cancer. Her father suffered from esophageal cancer for 11 years before he died at 61. (I remember that my grandmother used to feed him through a funnel she inserted into a hole near his navel. A portion of his esophagus had been removed, so he was unable to swallow anything.)

Three years ago during my first colonoscopy, four polyps were removed. In November of this year I had another one. Five benign polyps were removed this time. I won't have to have another procedure for four years.

The preparation for a colonoscopy is an opportunity to get in touch with your normal eating habits by suspending them for a few days. The goal is to cleanse the length of the colon enough to make visible its interior walls. In order to achieve this one must take a series of laxatives and liquids over a period of 8 or 9 hours. During this time and for several hours afterward, one is virtually a prisoner of the bathroom, enduring a variety of mild discomforts.

The colonoscopy itself is not particularly difficult for the patient since a sedative is used during the procedure.

The American Cancer Society recommends screening for colon cancer for everyone 50 years and older. I am hopeful of persuading my brother and sisters that yesterday was the day for a colonoscopy.

Unofficial Final Results

I've been putting in late nighters during every election for the last 9 years. Each election night the county elections office emails the results for me to post on the county web site. Tonight (11/08/05), for the first time, the county email server stopped delivering. I had to have them send the results to my Yahoo account. Thanks, Yahoo.

billmccabe@yahoo.com

Adopt-A-Minefield

Merna, Alan and I went to an Adopt-A-Minefield benefit Saturday evening at the Galleria. Lynn Bradach's son Travis was killed in Iraq while disarming a bomb. (Lynn's brother, Joel, work's with me at Washington County.)
After Travis died, Lynn focused her grief by working with Adopt-A-Minefield. She raised $30,000 dollars last year and cleared mines from the vicinity of a school in Cambodia. I think she raised at least twice that much last night. Bill Naito Company donated the space, and the Western Cullinary Institute donated food and beverages.