Cancer Survivor: To Fight Is to Live

Cancer is really great material to work with. The comedienne Tig Notaro discovered this after making cancer part of her routine. (Opening line, “Hello, I have cancer. How are you?”) Dozens of people in my profession—which always had way too many smokers—wrote themselves into the grave, some quite elegantly. After my own cancer diagnosis, I swore I wasn’t going to write myself into the grave if the chemo and the surgery didn’t stop the disease. Nor was I going turn my disease into magazine fodder.

Then, not long after I returned to work, a cancer story popped up that was directly related to my treatment, and the managing editor asked me if I was interested. I hesitated. How many pages, I inquired. Four. “I’m in.” As a journalist, you have to work with what the news gives you–and take all the space you can get.

So I began to write about cancer, especially cancer research, occasionally revealing details of my own illness. I thought it would serve the reader. I took part in a drug study and urged other cancer patients to at least explore the trials available to them. Being a lab rat, it turns out, you get a little extra attention, too. And having been a customer gives you a certain amount of journalistic leverage with the scientists and physicians you are covering. They may know the biology of the disease (or some of it, cancer is monstrously complicated); but I lived it. I occasionally hear from readers seeking advice on treatment options, or about the surgery (horrible), about the hospitals where I was treated. I try to help them as best I can.

Lisa Bonchek Adams has also been sharing her case information, in more than 160,000 tweets that this Connecticut mother of three has posted since she started down cancer’s path seven years ago. Adams has taken part in a drug trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City, in an effort to treat her breast cancer that had advanced to stage IV and spread to other organs. She’s in desperate shape, hanging in and blogging hard.  “I gather up my pump cords, release myself from the wall’s grip. I walk, counter-clockwise around the nurse’s station with a vengeance, trying to push the pain and discomfort away,” she posted recently. I recognize that  pain; and that walk.  If you are walking you are not dying; I think I set the record for laps around the floor of the hospital, where I was treated.

Her relentless tweeting recently got the attention of Emma and Bill Keller—he’s the former New York Times editor turned columnist; she writes for the UK’s Guardian—who each tried to address some touchy issues with what critics thought were lead fingers. Mr. Keller suggested that his father-in-law’s quiet, no-heroic-measures taken death from cancer might have something to offer to U.S. healthcare providers, given the enormous cost of end-of-life care. Every battle can’t be fought to the last soldier, Mr. Keller suggested, and Adams’ daily battle briefs were raising false hopes about the benefits of experimental drugs. As for Adams herself, he wondered whether her blog was more about her than a public service to cancer patients. “Social media have become a kind of self-medication,” he wrote, bloodlessly. Mrs. Keller explored the idea that Adams was oversharing: “Are her tweets a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies, one step further than funeral selfies?”

Go ahead and just die already, was the takeaway, unfairly or not. The outrage within the cancer and journalism communities was such that the Guardian pulled the plug on Mrs. Keller’s story .

Having once experienced stage IV cancer, I understand Adams’ desire to fight it with every drug that Memorial can throw at her. If they had told me to drink mercury I would have asked for a double—and keep in mind that in many drug trials that is essentially what’s going on: You get dosed with poison while the clinicians try to guess whether the poison will kill you or the cancer first. But patients are fully informed. No one—especially not doctors—administers under the delusion that these are miracle drugs. Cancer treatment is still a three yards and a cloud of dust offense. The gains are small but they keep coming, which is why the trials need to be ongoing. And compared with the trials of decades past (read Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies for the horrifying accounts) the drug protocols are at least humane.

I also understand Adams’ desire, if not her need, to share her world with the blogosphere. It’s the literary equivalent of pacing the hallways. Or affirming that you are still here.  My approach took a different format. I worked out like a maniac and continued to play basketball and soccer until the day before my surgery. Every dribble seemed like I was adding a day to my life. It was all completely irrational but you do what you can to stay sane.

Adams posts are completely rational, and some are completely compelling. Whether hers is a hopeless case at this point isn’t for the Kellers to decide, or even debate for that matter. If you are not interested in Lisa Adams’ radiation treatments, or anyone else’s, by all means go back to your cat photos if that’s what you like. It’s a big web. But people like Adams are going to become more numerous because cancer has outlasted other diseases to become our top killer. Cancer will kill more than 500,000 people this year, even as the funding for the National Cancer Institutes got cut in last year’s political knife fight.  Adams will remind us, until her last breath it seems, that this is a war we are still losing.

10 Small Things That Will Expand Your Consciousness In Big Ways

Did you know “ignorance is bliss” is actually a misquote? The entirety of the line is: “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

Unawareness is a major player on the team of ‘shit that causes us to suffer.’ Freedom is in realizing that we are not what we think or feel, but we are what observes the thoughts and feelings.

“Expand your consciousness” is just a fancy schmancy way of saying: be more aware of what you do, what you experience, how you react, and what that reaction means to show you. It doesn’t mean to feel less or do less or be different; just to be more aware, more conscious.

It’s a means to pave a path to be freer, less confined by the problems you create for yourself because you were conditioned to.

1. Listen to binaural beats if you find meditating on your own difficult. They’re just different frequencies that play and shift your brain waves (sounds scary, but will mellow you out to a meditative state.) You can download apps or songs or just listen to them on YouTube.

2. Don’t be afraid of feeling: no feeling will last, but it will return until you take what you need to learn from it. Fighting the feeling gives it the power because it brings the issue to your awareness and puts tons of ‘fight or flight survival’ energy toward it unnecessarily. You suppress it and give it all your power by doing so. You have to relearn what it means to appreciate every experience, and focus on the fact that whatever it offers in that moment is something to be conscious of and present for.

3. Your personal growth is not a means to an end. If you only want to become a better person to get a partner or to prove someone wrong or to make more money or feel perpetually and forevermore “happy,” or to appease your “God” or because it’s the “good and right thing to do,” you’re always going to be stuck on evolving toward what your partner would want, what the job requires, what allows you to avoid experiences so to not experience pain, what your particular religion of choice says is right, what you were conditioned to believe “good” is. You have to let go of framing your idea of what should be, it’s the only way to genuinely accept what is.

4. Identify the meaningless things to which you’ve assigned meaning. If you think happiness is in getting a certain thing, you’re never going to find it so long as it’s external. If you’re attached or controlling about your clothing, your hair, your home, your relationship, etc. understand that you’ve assigned a deeper, personal projection onto that thing as some reflection of who you think you are and how you think you’re doing. Rather than allowing things to reflect yourself to you, you try to control them so as to not have to see yourself clearly.

5. Grow your “little voice” into a big one by trusting in what it says, just once. If something tells you to take an umbrella with you in the morning and then you realize that it did indeed rain that afternoon, you’ll be so in awe of how powerful your subconscious is you’ll immediately start to grow it into a powerful, resounding, deep and underlying knowing as opposed to a little voice you oppress.

6. Travel to see and study how other people live. If that’s not practical, look it up online. Watch documentaries. Read. Ask a friend who’s been somewhere you haven’t. I’m not talking about what it’s like to see the leaning tower of Pisa, I’m talking about what beauty standards look like around the world, what people value. What their history books looked like in elementary school (we don’t all learn the same story.) Once you realize that there isn’t only one standard of success, fortune, happiness, beauty, wealth, whatever it may be, you will realize that the one you were holding yourself to was just made up in your mind.

7. Question your intentions. We tend to evaluate our actions based on how we understand other people will perceive them. So if we do something that looks good, even though it’s rooted in something malicious, we’ll convince ourselves that it is, indeed, good.

8. Start to analyze what you do (and how humanity at large behaves) through the Bicameral Model of the mind. Level one is when obedience is most important. Two is when being ‘right’ is most important. Three is when producing results is most important (growth, art, evolution, understanding, etc.) and you are in control of your thoughts and feelings, which is how you’re able to do so.

9. Find humility in realizing how human you are. There is something so incredibly endearing about being honest about your humanity. It’s the way people bond. The kind of honesty that matters isn’t the kind that’s easy to confess. But you have to realize that the only reason it would ever not be easy is because we are the only animals who don’t want to be animals. We think there’s something wrong with being flawed and imperfect, so we try to cover it up and fix everything to be accepted until eventually we realize that the most genuine love and acceptance comes from being honest about being not okay. (People mostly can see through things like that anyway, don’t be so naive.)

10. Act with love (or rather, realize how often you don’t.) Differentiate soul and ego. One is your essential nature, the other is your identification with the “I.” It’s the brain’s understanding of who and what you are versus the essential nature that doesn’t require definition to exist. The ego will act out of jealousy and survival and desire to be superior; the soul will act out of love and understanding and compassion. There’s a difference between your inner and outer self. Becoming aware of the root of your thoughts and intentions is the first step in understanding it.

Copenhagen Zoo kills 4 lions, weeks after shooting giraffe

A Danish zoo that made international headlines last month when it killed a healthy giraffe is once again in the news after it killed four lions to make way for a new male.

The lions were killed Monday, said Tobias Stenbaek Bro, a spokesman for the Copenhagen Zoo.

Two of those were young lions that were not old enough to survive by themselves and would have been killed by the new male lion if it had the chance, Bro told CNN. He said the zoo had tried to place them elsewhere, "but unfortunately there wasn't any interest."

The other two are the youngsters' parents, described by the Copenhagen Zoo as a "very old" breeding pair.

The new male lion was brought from Givskud Zoo, also in Denmark, to form a breeding group with the Copenhagen Zoo's two 18-month-old females, born on site in 2012.

The zoo had to put down the old lions and their young offspring "because of the natural structure and behavior" of the lion pride, the Copenhagen Zoo said in a prepared statement.

The newcomer is about 3 years old, large for his age and healthy, the zoo said. After he's had a few days to adjust to his new surroundings, visitors will be able to see him.

"He is a beautiful young male and I am certain he will be an impressive ambassador for his species," zoo chief Steffen Straede is quoted as saying.

He said the three young lions would "be the foundation of the zoo's next lion era."

Public anger

The decision by the Copenhagen Zoo to shoot dead its giraffe, named Marius, in February to prevent inbreeding sparked widespread outrage.

The killing of four healthy lions has prompted further dismay.

Some questioned why the lions weren't sent elsewhere if the Copenhagen Zoo no longer had space.

"Why are people visiting this abhorrent animal slaughter house," said a message posted on a Facebook page that calls for the closure of the zoo.

The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria -- a body governing 345 institutions -- said that the Copenhagen Zoo had not broken its codes of conduct and that it "has been consistent in its approach to animal population management, and high standards of animal welfare."

The zoo supports natural cycles of reproduction and cub rearing, it said, and its lions are not part of a breeding program.

"While EAZA regrets the death of the animals in question, we recognize the right of Copenhagen Zoo to humanely cull them in line with their policies," it added.

Such culling is not uncommon, although large animals are less likely to meet that fate.

European Association of Zoos and Aquaria spokesman David Williams-Mitchell told CNN that across the European zoos governed by the body, about 3,000 to 5,000 animals are killed each year under programs to manage zoo populations.

This includes "everything from tadpoles and insects up to charismatic megafauna like giraffes and lions," he said, adding that it represents only 0.06% of the zoos' overall animal population.

Exact figures are hard to come by, but a few hundred of those killed by the zoos each year would be large animals, he said.

Williams-Mitchell added that members of the public and animal rights groups tend to object only when zoos kill "cute, storybook animals," rather than rodents or tadpoles.

Giraffe backlash

Marius the giraffe was shot by a veterinarian and dismembered in front of an audience that included children, before being fed to the zoo's lions, tigers and leopards.

Addressing criticism after that killing, Bengt Holst, the zoo's scientific director, told CNN the decision was made for the greater good of the giraffe population.

"Our giraffes are part of an international breeding program, which has a purpose of ensuring a sound and healthy population of giraffes," he said.

But the explanation did little to appease public anger.

The backlash prompted another zoo in Denmark to reverse course. Jyllands Park Zoo had said it was considering culling one of its male giraffes if a female was brought in to breed. But it backtracked.

Scrap metal find turns out to be $33 million Faberge golden egg

A $14,000 jumble sale find turned into millions of dollars for a man who'd been thwarted in his attempts to turn a quick profit by selling the tiny ornament to scrap metal dealers.

The man, who hails from the Midwest but wishes to remain anonymous, had been left financially stretched after he apparently overestimated what the tiny golden egg would be worth once melted down. He'd been hoping to make $500.

In a fit of desperation one night last year, he typed "egg" and the name engraved on the clock it contained -- "Vacheron Constantin" -- into Google.

His search brought up a 2011 article in Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper describing a "frantic search" for the object: the Third Imperial Easter Egg, made by Faberge for the Russian royal family and estimated to be worth 20 million pounds ($33 million).

Far from being a financial millstone around the scrap metal trader's neck, it appeared the golden egg might live up to its fairy-tale namesake and avoid the furnace with just a few scratches -- to assess its gold content -- to show for it.

The man contacted Faberge expert Kieran McCarthy and flew to London to visit McCarthy's workplace: Wartski jewelers in Mayfair, where the egg will be displayed to the public for only the second time, from April 14 to 17.

'Holy Grail of art and antiques'

McCarthy said he had no warning about the visit.

"A gentleman had walked in wearing jeans, a plaid shirt and trainers. His mouth was just dry with fear," McCarthy said, to the extent that he could barely speak. "He handed me a portfolio of photographs, and there was the egg, the Holy Grail of art and antiques."

Though he had not handled the egg itself, McCarthy said, he was "buzzing from top to toe." He flew to the man's home to see the object in person and confirmed that it was indeed the Third Imperial Egg.

The finder "just can't believe his luck," McCarthy said. "It's almost an affirmation of his existence that this happened to him."

11 intriguing things owned by wealthy Russians

Intrinsic value

McCarthy said the man had overestimated the value of the egg's materials -- which were worth about what he'd paid for it -- but underestimated its value as a work of art.

"He didn't look upon a work of art at all. He saw that it was pretty and it was nice, but he was buying on intrinsic value. He bought and sold. ... This was quite a considerable outlay for him," he said. "The essence of Faberge's work is craftsmanship. It's the beauty of design and the conceiving of that object."

Pre-revolutionary Russia had seen "this last gasp of imperial patronage colliding with craftsmanship," he said, as the tsar and tsarina had everything they wanted.

"Their daily lives were lived at such a height of luxury that you couldn't really excite them with anything of intrinsic value. It was always about the craftsmanship. This is what that object is about, this craftsmanship and demonstration of skill. If you're not looking for it, you won't see it," McCarthy said.

"It's a very delicate and small object, and people never anticipate that Faberge eggs can be that size," he said, instead imagining them to be "the size of the Empire State Building, with diamonds the size of footballs."

But the eggs were a celebration of Easter and love tokens, "so in a way, they are quite modest."

Missing eggs

The finder was far removed from the art and antiques world and so had not recognized the object's true value. After reading the article, he could hardly believe what he was in possession of, McCarthy said.

"He was just getting frantic. He couldn't sleep; he couldn't eat; he couldn't think about anything else."

Until the 1916 overthrow of the tsar, Carl Faberge's jewelery workshop made 50 Easter eggs for the family, each taking a year or more to craft. According to Faberge, designs were produced in the greatest secrecy, "the only prerequisite being that they contained a surprise."

The egg on the brink of being melted down for scrap in the U.S. had been the third made: Tsar Alexander III's 1887 Easter gift to his wife, Tsarina Maria Feodorovna.

The 8.2-centimeter (3.2-inch) egg is on an elaborate gold stand supported by lion paw feet. Three sapphires suspend golden garlands around it, and a diamond acts an opening mechanism to reveal the Vacheron Constantin watch inside.

The egg was thought to have been lost after the Soviets listed it for sale in 1922 as part of a policy of turning "treasures into tractors," but in 2011, Faberge researchers recognized it in a 1964 auction catalog, reviving hopes it had survived and prompting the Telegraph article.

After the revolution, 42 of the imperial eggs made their way into private collections and museums. Eight, including the Third Imperial Egg, were thought to have been lost. Two others are thought to have survived, though their locations remain a mystery.

The other five were almost certainly destroyed, McCarthy said, with no reference to them after the Revolution.

The Third Imperial Egg has been purchased by a private collector who has allowed the public to glimpse it at Wartski before it disappears from general view again.

Ash Wednesday 2014: History, Dates, Traditions Of Lent's First Day Of Fasting

Ash Wednesday is observed on March 5, in 2014. The Christian holy day marks the beginning of Lent, a 40-day season of fasting that is considered preparation for Holy Week and the celebration of Easter.

Although there is no Biblical reference to Ash Wednesday or Lent, scholars of Christianity date the tradition of a 40-day fasting period back to 325 A.D.

Lent mirrors Jesus’ own 40-day period of fasting, described in the book of Matthew. Observers have ash placed on their foreheads in the shape of the cross as the words from Genesis 3:19 are spoken: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Fasting requirements for Catholics are outlined by the Code of Canon Law, and include eating no meat on the Fridays during Lent, as well as fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. (Fasting in this case refers to eating just one full meal a day.)

Many Christians will make personal vows of abstinence during Lent, which could include anything from refraining from eating candy, meat, vowing not to gossip, or being less selfish. Others will make a vow to do more for others including volunteering and working for social justice. All are expected to spend more time in prayer and reflection as Lent is considered by many to be an opportunity for spiritual transformation.

Lent is the opportunity to change what we ought to change but have not...Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now... Lent is a summons to live anew...Lent is the time to let life in again, to rebuild the worlds we've allowed to go sterile, to "fast and weep and mourn" for the goods we've foregone. If our own lives are not to die from lack of nourishment, we must sacrifice the pride or the sloth or the listlessness that blocks us from beginning again. Then, as Joel (2:12-18) promises, God will have pity on us and pour into our hearts the life we know down deep that we are lacking.

How to Solve Obamacare’s Youth Enrollment Problem

When the first Obamacare enrollment numbers were released, there was nervousness that only 24% of those signing up were in the important 18 to 34 age category. Those who initially signed up through the Affordable Care Act tended to be older and potentially less healthy, and that kind of population didn’t bode well for premiums—or the law’s economic viability. So the question at hand was this: How do we get more young people to enroll?

Currently Obamacare uses financial penalties to get people to sign up. The result is either resentment or just plain avoidance. Young people in particular are upset because they know they’re paying for their elders. But a new quantitative science, called social physics, shows us that the key isn’t just to make it in their economic self-interest, but to make doing so benefit their own circle of people.

Social physics is a new quantitative science that not only describes how networks of people behave, but also accurately predicts patterns of human behavior and influences those patterns. It harnesses big data to radically change our ideas about why people decide to change their behavior, and how new ideas reach them and move them.

For instance, in one community experiment, my MIT research group offered people financial rewards for healthier behavior. The result was a small improvement, but one that disappeared as soon as the experiment ended. However, in a second community, we gave people rewards only when their neighbors or members of their workgroup improved. The improvement was up to eight times greater, and, perhaps just as important, the pattern of healthier behavior continued even after the experiment’s money ran out.

What explains the difference? Social network incentives raise community awareness and create social pressure to work together. Individual incentives are just that: They engage only the individual and miss the power of community engagement. When people interact in small groups, the ability to punish or reward peers is effective at promoting trusted cooperative behavior.

The social physics approach to getting everyone to cooperate focuses on changing the connections between people rather than getting individual people to change their behavior. Social network incentives act by generating social pressure around the problem of finding cooperative behaviors; people experiment with new behaviors to find ones that are better. The social pressure generated is a function of the cost of the behavioral mismatch between the behavior of the individuals, the value of the relationship, and the amount of interaction. All this means that the most effective network incentives should be focused on the people who have the strongest social ties and the most interaction with others.

You can also use social physics in online environments. For instance, with colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, we encouraged  buddy groups within a digital social network around energy use: When someone saved energy, then gift points were given to his or her buddies. This social network incentive caused electricity consumption to drop by 17%, twice that seen in earlier energy conservation campaigns and more than four times more effective than the typical energy reduction campaign. Just as in the health experiment, behavior change was most effective when it leveraged the strength of the surrounding social ties.

So how can the Obama administration use social physics to increase outreach to young people ahead of National Youth Enrollment Day on Feb. 15?

The simplest example would be to offer discounts to young people in workgroups or in the local neighborhood—but only if everyone signs up. If you offered each person $5 a month if everyone were to sign up, it would be a real topic of conversation among young people. If you offered $50 up front, it would be something they would have to do, because otherwise they would be ostracized by their peers—even though $50 is less than $5 per month. Using social physics, rather than economics, could drive young people to sign up in droves.

How To Avoid Cabin Fever During This Endless Winter

It’s President’s Day, and thanks to the polar vortex you’ve probably been cooped up inside your house for days or maybe even a full week as the snow continues to fall. And the weather is taking a toll. Many are complaining of cabin fever or worse — snow rage.

Cabin fever isn’t a psychiatric diagnosis, but it does exist, says Josh Klapow, a clinical psychologist with a PhD at the school of public health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Basically, it’s your mind’s way of telling you that the environment you are in is less than optimal for normal functioning,” he says. “It’s when you’re in a space of restricted freedom for a period of time that you can no longer tolerate.”

Before you get full on “snow rage” — a term the media has coined for the extreme angst people are feeling about the weather — and pull a shotgun on a snow plow driver, here’s how you can recognize when you’re getting too stir crazy and how you can cope.

You probably are getting cabin fever if any of the following are true:

You’re feeling cooped up
You’re having difficulty concentrating on what’s in front of you
You feel lethargic, or simply feel unmotivated to do anything
You are feeling irritated and on edge for no apparent reason
The best way to get yourself out of your slump and in a happier mood is to get moving, find natural sunlight, and do anything that can engage your cognitive activity. The more ambitious snowed-in people can  go for a run around the bloc, start a home improvement project or read a book by window. Those feeling a little less motivated can at least make a snow angel for 10 minutes, sketch out projects they will take on once it’s sunny again, or at least pull up the blinds and play a brain-teasing app like QuizUp. Anything but watching marathons of TV on the couch. Sorry, House of Cards fans, but unless your body and brain are active you are likely to become listless and depressed.

Also, avoid foods that will only make you feel more sluggish or more irritated. “We have a tendency, particularly in this country, of shoving ourselves full of high-carb and high-fat foods when we have nothing else to do. That’s not good because they create lethargy,” says Klapow. “The other thing we do is sit around and drink coffee, which is also bad because that feeds agitation.”

For some, it’s not just a matter of motivating themselves to cheer up but also motivating kids who have been stuck inside during a series of snow days. ”I can say as someone whose kids have been home for the last four days, you get to a point where you’re turning around and being like, ‘Are you still here?’” jokes Klapow.

Though having children home for days at a time during the school week can be tough, solving their cabin fever is even easier than solving yours. “Kids are going display their cabin fever in a more obvious sort of way. They’re going to pick on each other or they’re going to jump up and down,” says Klapow. “But we can tell them to go bundle up and run around outside for 15 minutes, whereas its harder to motivate ourselves to do the same as adults. You can control what they’re eating, even though its harder for us to regulate our own food intake. But helping your kids get energized with games and the right eating habits can help you alleviate your cabin fever too.”

It’s important, he says, to find ways to up our mood before we reach our tipping point. “Snow rage is not a clinical diagnosis,” Klapow says. “But you can think of it as the point where individuals have lost their ability to control their emotions, and the results are actions that are harmful to others — like yelling at a spouse or hitting your neighbor with a snow shovel.”

Let’s hope the snow ends soon so it doesn’t come to that.