Anxiety: That Pest

Grief Poem

Remembrance 

It is just shy of afternoon

when the grief slams into me

like an aching wave in my abdomen

and a stuck placein my parched throat.

I have not shed many tears

until late one night, the full moon showing,

I awoke, startled, at 2 a.m.and cried out, reaching

not for my father, just passed

but my mother, nine years gone.

My body filled with wracking, heaving sobs,

I stood up blindly, fought my way to the living room

where my husband lay sleeping spread-eagled

on the scratched rust-colored leather couch,

nodding off after a late night’s work.

Drowsily, he enfolded me in his arms.

Sssh, he whispered,

as if he held the wailing infant I once was.  

Night, Awakened: A Poem

Those awful nights –when you’re haunted by a memory, a conflict of the heart, an anxiety dream. We’ve all experienced those nights of tossing and turning, without sleep, that somehow… and wonderfully, pass into lovely days. A poem that digs into and chronicles one of those recent nights for me:

Night, Awakened

by Barbara Boughton 

The door creaks.

I slip out of the bedroom,

where you lie sleeping,

fitfully, under heavy blankets.

3 a.m.  A dangerous time in our little house.

A haunting dream awakens me.

My mind is snared by thoughts of the hidden, shadowy self. 

I sink into the plush brown living room chair,

enshroud myself in grandma’s knitted blanket,

sipping cool white wine,

feeling it course under my tongue.

I remember past slights and buried angers,

the pain we provokedin each other’s hearts,

the way we exposed our weakest places.

I try to recapture the joy of those bright afternoons,

when we hugged and leaned into each other,

laying down balm for our wounds. 

Peering into the darkness,

where the cats, disgruntled, slide by silently,

I wait for the first rays of sunlight,

hours and hours to go

until you awake

the room is filled with warmth,

the smell of tangerines, fresh ground coffee,

the vigorous routine and lively rhythm of the coming day begins. 

In the News: Why Some Skin Cancers Affect More Men

A fascinating new study may shed light on the reasons why men get more squamous cell skin cancers than women.

Squamous cell skin cancer is a type that is usually curable, and about 250,000 cases are diagnosed annually.

While squamous cell skin cancer usually isn’t fatal, it’s no laughing matter either. Squamous cell skin cancer can be disfiguring or even endanger health, if left untreated.Squamous cell skin cancer affects three times as many men as it does women. But why? Researchers have long thought that the reasons were linked to lifestyle – since men tend to be less zealous than women about protecting themselves from the sun. But an interesting new study suggests that the reason may lie in characteristics of male skin.

While the study was done in animals, it is the first of its kind to suggest that male skin has less innate protection against ultraviolet light than female skin – and that’s what makes it exciting.The study showed that after being exposed to ultraviolet light, the skin of male rats had lower antioxidant levels and diminished DNA repair capacity when compared to females.Although the females were more likely to suffer inflamed skin – a sunburn – after exposure to UV light, the males sustained more genetic damage from the same amount of UV light.

“Our data tells us that female skin has more antioxidants, compounds that scavenge DNA damaging chemicals,and potentially more mechanisms to repair DNA damage than male skin,” said Kathleen Tober, PhD, a research scientist in Ohio State’s Department of Pathology. “These gender differences suggest that female skin has a higher capacity for repairing sunlight induced DNA damage than does male skin.Without complete repair of this genetic damage, male skin is more prone to skin cancer than is female skin.”

Tober’s study was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention meeting in Philadelphia in early December.While the study points out one reason why male skin is more prone to skin cancer than female skin, it also underlines the link between the sun and the damage it can cause.

Overexposure to the sun’s rays can cause irrepairable damage to the DNA of skin cells –damage that may eventually lead to skin cancer. And while male skin may be more prone to this damage than female skin, all of us need to take heed to prevention messages about skin cancer. So, to my mind, this study is one more reason to cover up and slap on the sunscreen when out in the sun.

Talking about grief

As someone who’s lost both parents to cancer (my father at 79, my mother at 71) I know a little bit about grief. Here’s a poem that talks about the grief I went through after my father’s losing battle with lung cancer, and his death several years ago. I truly felt like an orphan after he died, but somehow I managed to get through it:

Grief Talking

I got through the day

on Xanax and chocolate ice cream sandwiches,

my thoughts whirling,

putting one foot in front of another,

haltingly.

In spite of everything,

I got up and continued on.

I noticed the yellow Mexican marigolds,

bushy from long neglect,

outside my bedroom window,

still turning their faces

upwards for the steady hot-beamed sun.

All About Skin - and Skin Cancer

Today at the beauty salon the young woman rinsing out my hair commented: “You have beautiful skin,” she said. As a survivor of skin cancer, I was reminded of what a gift healthy skin is, and how important it is to maintain it.

Each day I smooth make-up on my face with a sunscreen in it. I don’t go out of the house without it. I remember how wonderful it was to find this makeup 20 years ago. Back then, there were no foundations with sunscreens in them. You had to apply sunscreen (often gooey and irritating to the eyes), then apply your base makeup over it.

Now things are different. It’s easy to find makeup that has sunscreen with SPF 15 –there’s even a line of makeup with powders that come complete with sunscreen of SPF 15.

But in other ways, things haven’t changed. Tanning salons are still quite popular — and people don’t realize how damaging these can be to the skin, and that they are no safer than sun exposure.

In fact, it’s easy to prevent skin cancer — just don’t overexpose yourself to the sun or to tanning salons. Wear a hat and cover up when you’ll be spending extended hours in the sun.

Years ago, when I asked famed scientist Margaret Kripke what the cure would eventually be for skin cancer her answer was simple. “It’s prevention,” she said. “To stop skin cancer in the rats in my lab I just have to do one thing–turn off the UV lights,” she said.

Hello world!

Hello and welcome to my blog. I’m a medical writer with 25 years of experience in writing about health and medicine. This blog will be about my reactions to news in health and medicine, about my experiences as a medical writer, and about my new book Reduce Your Cancer Risk: Twelve Steps to a Healthier Life, co-authored with Michael Stefanek of the American Cancer Society. The book features information on how to reduce cancer risk using genetic counseling, nutrition and exercise, supplements, preventive medications and more. Wish me luck - I have 2 chapters written so far!