Today was a good day. Out of the blue I received an email from a long lost friend of mine by the name of Mike.
Mike and I used to work together when I lived back in N.H. Mike and I basically started our Public Defenders job at the same time.
Over the span of many years, Mike and I spent a lot of time together and went through a lot both professionally and personally. We always seemed to be there for each other when things got tough.
After I left the Public Defenders program, we still kept in contact but as time went by we lost touch of each other. As what usually happens between friends, life took center stage and we fell out of contact with each other.
Veronica and I moved, telephone numbers change or are unpublished and time basically moved on and seemed to pass by very quickly.
I am not sure exactly how Mike found me but I think that he happened upon Veronica's Facebook page. You know "that" page...that darn Farmville game page that so many people play. Ok...I am guilty too. I used to play it until I decided to go cold turkey and deactivate my Facebook account. There was a 6 step program involved with going cold turkey from Farmville but that saga is for another blog entry.
Enough about Farmville...back to my story.
As I was saying...I got an email from Mike today and I was very happy that he was able to track me down.
We will talk this weekend over the phone and try to get caught up on stuff that we have missed in each others life.
In the mean time, I have pointed Mike in the direction of this blog...why you ask....
Because my story and my life has basically been documented here and I couldn't tell it any better than it has already been told here....both the ups and downs
Plus there is the added benefit of having visual aids here...my photographs.
So to Mike and his family of course...welcome to my life and hopefully we won't lose touch of each other again.
A Change In New Adventure Plans
Veronica and I have decided to change our cruise plans. Originally we had made plans to take a 12 day Grand Mediterranean Cruise, on the NCL Spirit in September of 2012.
That cruise departed from Barcelona and ended in Venice. In between those two points the ship would have ports of call in a couple of places in Greece, Italy and Turkey. Some of those ports of call weren't ones that really interested us. Plus there was the fact that it was going to be more expensive flying into one location and out of a different location, rather that going each way through the same location.
Veronica really wanted to see Venice Italy, and the Greek Islands had been mentioned as a place that she also wanted to see.
So after looking over many cruise itineraries, we decided on doing a 7 day Eastern Mediterranean With Greek Islands cruise. This cruise departs and returns in Venice. Since we really would not be having much time to actually see Venice at the beginning or end of the actual cruise, we decided that we would fly to Venice several days before the cruise began. Because the cruise date is so far out, we can't make any hotel or airline reservations yet but we plan on spending 4 nights in a Venetian hotel that is right in the heart of historic Venice.
We will purchase transfer services from Norwegian Cruise Line so that we can easily get from the airport to our hotel in Venice and then from the hotel to the cruise ship. Transfers will also include going from the ship to the airport when our cruise is over.
We will actually have approximately 3 1/2 - 4 days to explore Venice and maybe take in a couple of islands such as Murano and Burano.
One of the hotels that NCL is showing on their web site is right in the heart of the historic district of Venice and it is also right on one of Venices many canals.
There is so much to see and do in Venice, that we could spend months there but unfortunately that isn't possible. But we will sure try to put a dent in all that there is to see and do in Venice.
During the cruise, we will have ports of call in Corfu, Santorini, Mykonos and Katakolon. There will be a couple of sea days in there also, which will allow us to relax just a bit.
This cruise is on the NCL Jade, which is the sister ship of the NCL Pearl. We have been on the Pearl a couple of times and really enjoyed being on that ship.
In order to make this all happen, we decided to go with an Inside Cabin, which are usually the least expensive category of cabins on a cruise ship. Our cabin will have the usual amenities that are in cabins along with two beds that form a queen sized bed.
Our cabin will be much smaller than the balcony and mini suite that we have previously had on past cruises but we don't plan on being in the cabin that much. Our cabijn is on the 10th deck.
There are plenty of things to do on this ship during our sea days plus they have a great observation area where you can kick back in a comfy chair and watch the beautiful coast drift by or get lost in a book.
Actually Veronica will most likely get lost in her new Kindle.
Below is the itinerary for our cruise:
Dates Port Arrival Departure
Sat Venice 5:00 PM
Sun At Sea
Mon Corfu 8:00 AM 3:00 PM
Tue Santorini 1:00 PM 10:00 PM
Wed Mykonos 8:00 AM 6:00 PM
Thu Katakolon 9:00 AM 6:00 PM
Fri At Sea
Sat Venice 8:00 AM
Here is a link for additional information about the NCL Jade
Future trips and locations that we are interested in seeing are Paris, Scotland, London, Ireland, Iceland, Norway and a bunch of other more inland locations that we will have possibly see doing either an escorted tour and maybe one of those river cruises. Plus we also are going to be doing a "mulligan" on the Baltic Capitals Cruise that we previously enjoyed so much.
That cruise departed from Barcelona and ended in Venice. In between those two points the ship would have ports of call in a couple of places in Greece, Italy and Turkey. Some of those ports of call weren't ones that really interested us. Plus there was the fact that it was going to be more expensive flying into one location and out of a different location, rather that going each way through the same location.
Veronica really wanted to see Venice Italy, and the Greek Islands had been mentioned as a place that she also wanted to see.
So after looking over many cruise itineraries, we decided on doing a 7 day Eastern Mediterranean With Greek Islands cruise. This cruise departs and returns in Venice. Since we really would not be having much time to actually see Venice at the beginning or end of the actual cruise, we decided that we would fly to Venice several days before the cruise began. Because the cruise date is so far out, we can't make any hotel or airline reservations yet but we plan on spending 4 nights in a Venetian hotel that is right in the heart of historic Venice.
We will purchase transfer services from Norwegian Cruise Line so that we can easily get from the airport to our hotel in Venice and then from the hotel to the cruise ship. Transfers will also include going from the ship to the airport when our cruise is over.
We will actually have approximately 3 1/2 - 4 days to explore Venice and maybe take in a couple of islands such as Murano and Burano.
One of the hotels that NCL is showing on their web site is right in the heart of the historic district of Venice and it is also right on one of Venices many canals.
There is so much to see and do in Venice, that we could spend months there but unfortunately that isn't possible. But we will sure try to put a dent in all that there is to see and do in Venice.
During the cruise, we will have ports of call in Corfu, Santorini, Mykonos and Katakolon. There will be a couple of sea days in there also, which will allow us to relax just a bit.
This cruise is on the NCL Jade, which is the sister ship of the NCL Pearl. We have been on the Pearl a couple of times and really enjoyed being on that ship.
In order to make this all happen, we decided to go with an Inside Cabin, which are usually the least expensive category of cabins on a cruise ship. Our cabin will have the usual amenities that are in cabins along with two beds that form a queen sized bed.
Our cabin will be much smaller than the balcony and mini suite that we have previously had on past cruises but we don't plan on being in the cabin that much. Our cabijn is on the 10th deck.
There are plenty of things to do on this ship during our sea days plus they have a great observation area where you can kick back in a comfy chair and watch the beautiful coast drift by or get lost in a book.
Actually Veronica will most likely get lost in her new Kindle.
Below is the itinerary for our cruise:
Dates Port Arrival Departure
Sat Venice 5:00 PM
Sun At Sea
Mon Corfu 8:00 AM 3:00 PM
Tue Santorini 1:00 PM 10:00 PM
Wed Mykonos 8:00 AM 6:00 PM
Thu Katakolon 9:00 AM 6:00 PM
Fri At Sea
Sat Venice 8:00 AM
Future trips and locations that we are interested in seeing are Paris, Scotland, London, Ireland, Iceland, Norway and a bunch of other more inland locations that we will have possibly see doing either an escorted tour and maybe one of those river cruises. Plus we also are going to be doing a "mulligan" on the Baltic Capitals Cruise that we previously enjoyed so much.
A Blood Test To Spot Cancer- Might Not Be A Cure But It Sure Could Help
I just read about a blood test that can spot stray cancer cells floating in your blood. This test is in its early stages but when it becomes mainstream, it will have huge benefits to both early screening for several types of cancer plus assist in seeing what drugs are the most beneficial during a patients treatment. The article below is an Associated Press article, being shown in its entirety and was written by:
MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer – Mon Jan 3, 6:51 am ET
Stray cancer cells in the blood mean that a tumor has spread or is likely to, many doctors believe. A test that can capture such cells has the potential to transform care for many types of cancer, especially breast, prostate, colon and lung.
Initially, doctors want to use the test to try to predict what treatments would be best for each patient's tumor and find out quickly if they are working.
"This is like a liquid biopsy" that avoids painful tissue sampling and may give a better way to monitor patients than periodic imaging scans, said Dr. Daniel Haber, chief of Massachusetts General Hospital's cancer center and one of the test's inventors.
Ultimately, the test may offer a way to screen for cancer besides the mammograms, colonoscopies and other less-than-ideal methods used now.
"There's a lot of potential here, and that's why there's a lot of excitement," said Dr. Mark Kris, lung cancer chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He had no role in developing the test, but Sloan-Kettering is one of the sites that will study it this year.
Many people have their cancers diagnosed through needle biopsies. These often do not provide enough of a sample to determine what genes or pathways control a tumor's growth. Or the sample may no longer be available by the time the patient gets sent to a specialist to decide what treatment to prescribe.
Doctors typically give a drug or radiation treatment and then do a CT scan two months later to look for tumor shrinkage. Some patients only live long enough to try one or two treatments, so a test that can gauge success sooner, by looking at cancer cells in the blood, could give patients more options.
"If you could find out quickly, 'this drug is working, stay on it,' or 'this drug is not working, try something else,' that would be huge," Haber said.
The only test on the market now to find tumor cells in blood — CellSearch, made by J&J's Veridex unit — just gives a cell count. It doesn't capture whole cells that doctors can analyze to choose treatments.
Interest in trying to collect these cells soared in 2007, after Haber and his colleagues published a study of Mass General's test. It is far more powerful than CellSearch and traps cells intact. It requires only a couple of teaspoons of blood and can be done repeatedly to monitor treatment or determine why a drug has stopped working and what to try next.
"That's what got the scientific community's interest," Kris said. Doctors can give a drug one day and sample blood the next day to see if the circulating tumor cells are gone, he explained.
The test uses a microchip that resembles a lab slide covered in 78,000 tiny posts, like bristles on a hairbrush. The posts are coated with antibodies that bind to tumor cells. When blood is forced across the chip, cells ping off the posts like balls in a pinball machine. The cancer cells stick, and stains make them glow so researchers can count and capture them for study.
The test can find one cancer cell in a billion or more healthy cells, said Mehmet Toner, a Harvard University bioengineer who helped design it. Researchers know this because they spiked blood samples with cancer cells and then searched for them with the chip.
Studies of the chip have been published in the journals Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine. It is the most promising of several dozen that companies and universities are rushing to develop to capture circulating tumor cells, said Bob McCormack, technology chief for Veridex.
The agreement announced Monday will have Veridex and J&J's Ortho Biotech Oncology unit work to improve the microchip, including trying a cheaper plastic to make it practical for mass production. No price goal has been set, a company official said, but the current CellSearch test costs several hundred dollars.
The companies will start a research center at Mass General and will have rights to license the test from the hospital, which holds the patents.
In a separate effort, Mass General, Sloan-Kettering, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston will start using the test this year. They are one of the "dream teams" sharing a $15 million grant from the Stand Up to Cancer telethon, run by the American Association for Cancer Research.
Already, scientists have been surprised to find that more cancer patients harbor these stray cells than has been believed. In one study, the test was used on men thought to have cancer confined to the prostate, "but we found these cells in two-thirds of patients," Toner said.
This might mean that cancer cells enter the blood soon after a tumor starts, or that more cancers have already spread but are unseen by doctors.
Or it could mean something else entirely, because researchers have much to learn about these cells, said Dr. Minetta Liu, a breast cancer specialist at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. She led a session on them at the recent San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and has been a paid speaker for Veridex. She hopes the cells will someday aid cancer screening.
"The dream is, a woman comes in for her mammogram and gets a tube of blood drawn," so doctors can look for cancer cells in her blood as well as tumors on the imaging exam, she said.
That's still far off, but Mass General's test already is letting doctors monitor patients without painful biopsies. Like Greg Vrettos, who suffered a collapsed lung from a biopsy in 2004, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
"It had spread to both lungs and they couldn't operate," said Vrettos, 63, a nonsmoker and retired electrical engineer from Durham, N.H. Tests from the biopsy showed that he was a good candidate for the drug Iressa, which he has taken ever since. He goes to Boston every three months for CT scans and the blood test.
"They could look at the number of cancer cells and see that it dropped over time. It corresponded with what the scans were showing," Vrettos said of doctors looking at his blood tests.
The test also showed when he had a setback last January and needed to have his treatment adjusted.
"I think it's going to be revolutionary," he said of the test.
MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer – Mon Jan 3, 6:51 am ET
Blood test to spot cancer gets big boost from J&J
BOSTON – A blood test so sensitive that it can spot a single cancer cell lurking among a billion healthy ones is moving one step closer to being available at your doctor's office.
Boston scientists who invented the test and health care giant Johnson & Johnson will announce Monday that they are joining forces to bring it to market. Four big cancer centers also will start studies using the experimental test this year.Stray cancer cells in the blood mean that a tumor has spread or is likely to, many doctors believe. A test that can capture such cells has the potential to transform care for many types of cancer, especially breast, prostate, colon and lung.
Initially, doctors want to use the test to try to predict what treatments would be best for each patient's tumor and find out quickly if they are working.
"This is like a liquid biopsy" that avoids painful tissue sampling and may give a better way to monitor patients than periodic imaging scans, said Dr. Daniel Haber, chief of Massachusetts General Hospital's cancer center and one of the test's inventors.
Ultimately, the test may offer a way to screen for cancer besides the mammograms, colonoscopies and other less-than-ideal methods used now.
"There's a lot of potential here, and that's why there's a lot of excitement," said Dr. Mark Kris, lung cancer chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He had no role in developing the test, but Sloan-Kettering is one of the sites that will study it this year.
Many people have their cancers diagnosed through needle biopsies. These often do not provide enough of a sample to determine what genes or pathways control a tumor's growth. Or the sample may no longer be available by the time the patient gets sent to a specialist to decide what treatment to prescribe.
Doctors typically give a drug or radiation treatment and then do a CT scan two months later to look for tumor shrinkage. Some patients only live long enough to try one or two treatments, so a test that can gauge success sooner, by looking at cancer cells in the blood, could give patients more options.
"If you could find out quickly, 'this drug is working, stay on it,' or 'this drug is not working, try something else,' that would be huge," Haber said.
The only test on the market now to find tumor cells in blood — CellSearch, made by J&J's Veridex unit — just gives a cell count. It doesn't capture whole cells that doctors can analyze to choose treatments.
Interest in trying to collect these cells soared in 2007, after Haber and his colleagues published a study of Mass General's test. It is far more powerful than CellSearch and traps cells intact. It requires only a couple of teaspoons of blood and can be done repeatedly to monitor treatment or determine why a drug has stopped working and what to try next.
"That's what got the scientific community's interest," Kris said. Doctors can give a drug one day and sample blood the next day to see if the circulating tumor cells are gone, he explained.
The test uses a microchip that resembles a lab slide covered in 78,000 tiny posts, like bristles on a hairbrush. The posts are coated with antibodies that bind to tumor cells. When blood is forced across the chip, cells ping off the posts like balls in a pinball machine. The cancer cells stick, and stains make them glow so researchers can count and capture them for study.
The test can find one cancer cell in a billion or more healthy cells, said Mehmet Toner, a Harvard University bioengineer who helped design it. Researchers know this because they spiked blood samples with cancer cells and then searched for them with the chip.
Studies of the chip have been published in the journals Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine. It is the most promising of several dozen that companies and universities are rushing to develop to capture circulating tumor cells, said Bob McCormack, technology chief for Veridex.
The agreement announced Monday will have Veridex and J&J's Ortho Biotech Oncology unit work to improve the microchip, including trying a cheaper plastic to make it practical for mass production. No price goal has been set, a company official said, but the current CellSearch test costs several hundred dollars.
The companies will start a research center at Mass General and will have rights to license the test from the hospital, which holds the patents.
In a separate effort, Mass General, Sloan-Kettering, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston will start using the test this year. They are one of the "dream teams" sharing a $15 million grant from the Stand Up to Cancer telethon, run by the American Association for Cancer Research.
Already, scientists have been surprised to find that more cancer patients harbor these stray cells than has been believed. In one study, the test was used on men thought to have cancer confined to the prostate, "but we found these cells in two-thirds of patients," Toner said.
This might mean that cancer cells enter the blood soon after a tumor starts, or that more cancers have already spread but are unseen by doctors.
Or it could mean something else entirely, because researchers have much to learn about these cells, said Dr. Minetta Liu, a breast cancer specialist at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. She led a session on them at the recent San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and has been a paid speaker for Veridex. She hopes the cells will someday aid cancer screening.
"The dream is, a woman comes in for her mammogram and gets a tube of blood drawn," so doctors can look for cancer cells in her blood as well as tumors on the imaging exam, she said.
That's still far off, but Mass General's test already is letting doctors monitor patients without painful biopsies. Like Greg Vrettos, who suffered a collapsed lung from a biopsy in 2004, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
"It had spread to both lungs and they couldn't operate," said Vrettos, 63, a nonsmoker and retired electrical engineer from Durham, N.H. Tests from the biopsy showed that he was a good candidate for the drug Iressa, which he has taken ever since. He goes to Boston every three months for CT scans and the blood test.
"They could look at the number of cancer cells and see that it dropped over time. It corresponded with what the scans were showing," Vrettos said of doctors looking at his blood tests.
The test also showed when he had a setback last January and needed to have his treatment adjusted.
"I think it's going to be revolutionary," he said of the test.
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