Thursday's Truffle is...Stories of Hope and Inspiration!

Many people know a bit about pancreatic cancer since the actor Patrick Swayze died from it in 2009 at the age of 57.  Many know that it is an extremely aggressive cancer and that its survival statistics are dismal.  However, there is one other cancer this virulent that many people don't know about...a brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme, often shortened to "GBM".

The median survival time for a newly diagnosed GBM patient is about a year.  Yet, there are those patients who have defied the odds to survive over ten years.  One of these remarkable people is Tom Sadowski.  For the approaching month of May--Brain Cancer Awareness month--Donna McCart contacted Tom for an interview, so we could share with you his inspirational story.  Here Tom tells you a little about himself, and then answers some questions from Donna.

About me

Tom Sadowski, 59.  I was diagnosed in 1999 at 47 years young.  I had the good fortune to have a primary care doc who acted quickly based on my symptoms that did not obviously suggest brain tumor. They were all visual like missing words when reading, bumping into things on my left side, etc.

The symptoms occurred on a spring break trip with my family.  I called my doc at home on Sunday when I returned.  He scheduled a scan for Wednesday, I saw the neurologist and neurosurgeon Thursday and had surgery the following Tuesday.  My tumor was in the upper right parietal lobe.

It still amuses me that I was diagnosed April 1.  I still don’t know who fooled who.

My first surgery was at Ellis Fischel Cancer Center in Columbia, MO (Ted Colapinto was the neurosurgeon and Clay Anderson was the oncologist).  Dr. Colapinto said the tumor was still encapsulated and he was able to get it all.

After surgery, I was first treated off-trial, with stereotactic radiation and chemo (BCNU, which I don’t think is used anymore).  I also had a six week regimen of radiation.  Since I couldn’t drive and my wife was working I often asked others to drive me. Sometimes these were people I knew but not that well, such as the son of a good friend and the provost where I worked, the University of Missouri.  We had good chats.  I also become friends with the techs.  The steroids did help with my energy through all of this.

On my recurrence (same location as before) in 2001, I was treated at University Hospital in Columbia (John Oro was the neurosurgeon).  As part of the surgery, Gliadel wafers were implanted. 

In 2002 there was a suspected recurrence and for this I went out of network to University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).  Their tumor board agreed another surgery was warranted.  Dr. Mitch Berger did the surgery and, needless to say, I am a huge fan.  Dr. Michael Prados was the oncologist.  The good news was it was only scar tissue and radiation necrosis.

I live in Jefferson City, MO.  I am retired from a career in auditing, accounting and administration, having served as a Director of State Audits for the Missouri State Auditor and as a Director of Accounting for both the University of Missouri and the State of Missouri.

I am now engaged in some volunteer activities, among other things serving as treasurer of our Boys and Girls Club. 

My most treasured time, though, is communicating with GBM survivors and caregivers.  I am listed as a resource with several organizations and people know I am willing to talk to others about this.  It is how I “pay it forward” for the blessings I have received as a long-term survivor.

I am married to Jatha and together we have three children – Grant, Cale and Kaitlyn.  We had a terrier-Chihuahua mix that lived to 17 years.  King truly was a part of our family (the only one in our family picture who was good on every take) and I don’t see us replacing him.  While I was home for a month after the first surgery I would often lay with him in front of the stereo listening to music.  He would also be with me for naps.

Regarding the kids, we told them what was going on from the start and they handled it pretty well.  I think it was because we were open and honest with them, neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic. Now, years later, what they told us is they watched how we were dealing with it.  Kids can just tell when you aren’t being straight with them.  They take their cues from you.

Donna:  Were you part of any clinical trials, or were you told about any at all?

Tom:  I did one treatment as off trial. Yes, I was told about trials but there was never a need to pursue one.

Donna:  What part about all this was the toughest?  What were the biggest challenges you faced in the early days post diagnosis? Did you ever feel like you “hit bottom emotionally”?  What got you through it?  How do you get the support you need?

Tom:  I really have no memory of anything being tough and I never “hit bottom”.  One of my priests told me I must really be angry and I told him no.  Why should I be angry and at whom?

One of my mantras was “Que sera, sera – what will be, will be.”  No amount of worrying will change the outcome.  Did I think about it?  Sure.  As I like to say, I visited the future but I didn’t stay there.  You need to know what is possible so you will recognize things when they occur and prepare for them.  I always wanted to know what might happen and what the options were so we weren’t caught by surprise.  As my wife often said to the docs, “There is nothing you can tell us that is worse than we can imagine.”

One thing that is tricky is symptoms.  Your first thought is recurrence.  You see everything through the prism of GBM.  Is it back? Going for a scan I rarely worried as much as my wife and it took me a while to realize that.  I feel in many ways GBM is hardest on the family because of the emotional toll.

This prism is the new normal.  You can’t go back.  Will there ever be a day that you don’t think about GBM?  Maybe.  It took a while but one day I realized I didn’t think about it yesterday.  Oh, I still knew, but not front and center.  You adjust and don’t let it be your life.  One day as we were leaving the hospital I told my wife this – I don’t want to live my life thinking I have some finite time left and then later look back with regret when I realize I had more time and wasted it.  You don’t have to change your life or become someone else.  Just be more mindful to do what is right for you.

Regarding symptoms, there are so many causes – medical, emotional, physical, spiritual.  It may be easier to understand what is happening than why and what you can do.

One other observation - the docs don’t have the experience of the patient.  As good as mine were they sometimes didn’t relate or tell me something I needed.  This is why having connections with other survivors can be so helpful – sharing what the path is like.  Giving a heads-up not just on what might happen, but its significance.

Receiving support was an emotional and humbling experience.  Why do these people care about me, even people I barely know.  You may find, as I did, that you are loved and lovable.  Not an easy thing to accept, at least for me

Donna:  Did you have health insurance? Was it adequate to cover your treatments? If not, have you had financial hardship and how have you handled that?

Tom:  Yes, I had health insurance and it covered my treatments, including going out of network.

Donna:  Did you make lifestyle changes after diagnosis (food, exercise, other?)  Do you do any "alternative" treatments along with western meds?

Tom:  I did not make any lifestyle changes after diagnosis, though more recently I got back to eating better and walking regularly.

Donna:  Do you live with deficits from having brain tumors and treatments? Have you learned how to compensate and overcome the deficits you live with?

Tom:  My only deficit is minor loss of peripheral vision.

Donna:  What gave you hope that you can beat the statistics?  Was there a moment or point in time (and what were you doing) that you realized you might defy those statistics?  Did you start our pretty much hopeless and then realize things weren’t turning out that way after all, or did you always know you were going to beat your cancer?

Tom:  I don’t know that I ever thought about beating the odds.  I still don’t think that way, even though I have been tumor free since 2001.  I do know how fortunate I have been.

I never felt hopeless and part of that was my faith.  It is easy to have faith until you are tested.  That is when you find out what your faith is made of.

Two things about my daughter, who was not yet eleven.  First, I remember seeing her in our yard and thinking I might never get to walk her down the aisle.  After a while these thoughts went away.  The second was my wife telling me that my daughter said, “My dad’s going to be OK”.  That was a comfort to me. Yes, maybe I’ll be OK.

Two things I did not understand about the statistics were that they are a median –half are above and half below and they are based on five year old data.  A lot can change in five years.

Donna:  What was the most important advice you were given throughout this journey?

Tom:  Nothing sticks out at this point.

Donna:  Any good tips you can give newly diagnosed patients that will help them through the standard treatments—surgery, radiation, and chemo?

Tom:  Start with three words – Comfort.  Healing.  Hope.  Put yourself at peace as much as you can amidst the turmoil.  Take a breath.  OK, take another breath.  You might not be cured but you can be healed.  A brain tumor is something you have, not something you are.  Your biggest challenges are not medical or physical.  Your brain holds who you are.  If you have emotional or spiritual issues, resolving them can make you whole as a person, regardless of the medical side.  Finally, there is always hope.  Certainly there is hope medically, with new treatments, trials and research.  But your biggest hope is living as who you are.

Don’t try this alone.  No matter how smart or strong you are, let others in to help, on all levels.

Put someone in charge of communicating and being a central point of contact.  We used a close friend who would email people to keep them informed.

Decide how open you want to be and how and how much you want to interact with others.  I was very willing to share and I enjoyed people visiting.

Make sure you get enough rest and don’t overdo.

When we met the neurosurgeon the first time, my wife asked a lot of questions.  At least twice he said, “Nobody asked me that before”.  That’s who you want with you, someone who can pick up the nuance and pull out what you need to know that the doctor may not think about.

Even when my wife is emotionally engaged she can think clearly, see what needs to be done, and act.  You want this with you, too, when dealing with a GBM.

Donna:  Tom, Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences and offer insight to others on this journey.  Your ability to keep perspective with the challenges thrown at you shows a real strength of character. I wish you many more years of continued happiness with your family.  

Tom:  Cancer, whether GBM or something else, is a fact of life, but it does not define us.  All of us caring for others helps make the best possible life for each of us.  Thank you for doing this.

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Chocolate Box contributor Donna McCart is the loving wife of Raymond, who was diagnosed with GBM in April 2011 and just recently passed away of his disease. Donna and Ray have one daughter, Lauren, in her early 20s, and share their life with Yoshi, an Akita, and Ace, a chocolate Lab, in the suburbs of Philadelphia. 

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May is Brain Cancer Awareness month!  Please visit our link,

Warning Signs of Brain Cancer 
that Survivors Want You to Know

At our sponsor site: GBM4cure

Thank you for visiting!  We'd love to start this mini-mag up again someday, and comments and submissions are always welcome.  Our contributors write for us at no charge.  If you like them, please pay them a visit!  If you have questions or a submission, email gbm4cure@gmail.com.

Tuesday's Truffle is...Short Fiction!

Cobra! Sahib! Cobra!

by

Cleveland W. Gibson

I wake up in a sweat, full of dread, seeing coloured, sharp images multiply beyond recognition.  I see her everywhere. I try to sleep but she invades my brain. I swear I've a hole in my skull through which she drifts but I can't prove it. Like daemons, the images beckon, then jump out at me forcing me awake.

I stand trembling in the middle of the night, unable to cast off the scourge of certain events, even though they took place in India many years ago. I may never get rid of feeling trapped like a caged animal.  Always the scene flashed in my mind's eye to torture me.  In my nightmare everything is as black as if it's me inside the body bag, it's me trying to come alive again, and it's me trying to claw a way out of my personal hell.

To say I was riddled with guilt might be a gross understatement.

I remember acting like a madman, as I waited those split seconds, for the security gate to our house at 53 Ripon Street, Calcutta, to be forced open.

“There's a murderer in there, Bearer,” I shouted. “I must save Sarah.”

He didn't answer. The medics bustled around him with drips as he tried to stifle a look of pain. 

The stab wound to his neck appeared serious enough to saturate his shirt. Soon the medics

would whisk him away to the Gandhi hospital on Lower Circular Road.

I'd seen the butter brown face, at the window, of the psychopathic killer hunted by the police. That grabbed my attention, as well as knowing Sarah, my wife, was inside our house alone with the violent killer Ali Sunja. His track record meant every person he met faced a cold, lonely grave.

I entered the courtyard at speed, then crept up the wide wooden staircase built on the side

of the house.  My revolver felt comforting in my hand.  I used the cover of the guava tree 

in climbing upwards to the first floor.

I passed through the open doorway and, though I listened carefully, all I heard was the 

sound of the grandfather clock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

“Sarah!” I shouted. “Where are you?”

First the single shot. Then Sarah screamed. From the sound of the shot I placed her in the bathroom. As I rushed to help her, I heard more shots in rapid succession. Then I felt the tense atmosphere, the strange eerie silence. I shivered.

“Sarah!”

The flimsy door stood ajar. I kicked it open wider still. I darted in to see Sarah lying 

in a bathtub of bubbles, her head thrown back, an arm twisted beneath her. I saw blood on her 

face, enough to make me fear the worst.

“Sarah! My God!”

In the same instant I fired one shot. One shot was enough, but then I was a Bisley Trophy Holder, a born marksman. An army sniper.

Sarah lay out of the bathtub at an awkward angle. Her position suggested death to me. After my time in the Burmese jungle I knew a dead body when I saw one.

On a mat across the floor lay the Indian Ali Sunja, a victim to the snake attack. 

He looked dead, as dead as the cobra a few feet away from him, the one I'd shot a second ago for killing my Sarah.

I hardly had time to take it all in when I heard a shout behind me.

“Cobra, Sahib! Cobra!”

I always remember that warning shout. It still fuels my nightmares. But it saved my life by 

alerting me--to the second cobra that loved its dead mate. 

It also hated me. Revenge. Revenge.

I turned.  The cobra, with its hypnotic red eyes, slid over the thin raffia matting toward me. As it reared it pumped up its hood.  Through my sunglasses I looked cold death in the face. I sweated.

I shot again.

                                                       #

I had thought myself wise to leave Sarah a loaded gun in case an incident like this arose. I swallowed hard, savouring the bitterness, the irony of the situation. My eyes filled with tears.

Wisdom is always fine, in retrospect. I stumbled through my parlor, past the numerous trophies I'd won for shooting that now gathered dust.

Wisdom too might have saved Sarah, if only I'd taught her to shoot straight.

Like me.

The End

********************************************************* 

Cleveland W. Gibson is the author of digital shorts Silver Wolf and Only 
the Best, plus several others available through amazon.com. He was born 
in colonial India in an atmosphere of colour, mystery and intrigue. In 
the UK, he worked in the government, trained as a life guard, and was a 
road race director for over ten years. Since taking up writing, he’s 
published over 200 short stories, poems, articles in more than 
eighty-five countries. His current project is a fantasy novel, House of 
the Skull Drum.

You can read more short fiction by Cleveland here. 

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May is Brain Cancer Awareness month!  Please visit our link,

Warning Signs of Brain Cancer 
that Survivors Want You to Know

At our sponsor site: GBM4cure

Thank you for visiting!  We'd love to start this mini-mag up again someday, and comments and submissions are always welcome.  Our contributors write for us at no charge.  If you like them, please pay them a visit!  If you have questions or a submission, email gbm4cure@gmail.com.

Thursday's Truffle is...Short Fiction!

                                    ELIZA'S QUICK-DRYING POLAR WHITE

                                          Copyright 2004 Joseph M. Erhardt

The field cricket kicked and squirmed, but Rupert DeNeuve held it firmly between

his thumb and forefinger.

      He turned the cricket over, exposing its back, and dotted the creature
with a dab of Eliza's Quick-Drying Polar White fingernail polish.

      Rupert never dotted the larger, spindly-legged camel crickets; if he
caught one, he just threw it out the nearest window.  But field crickets--like the 

one he held now--stridulated, and few things irritated him more than hunting 

down a chirping cricket in his bedroom at three o'clock in the morning.

      The camel crickets--ugly as they were with their long legs and humped
bodies--bore the virtue of silence.

      Still, Rupert reasoned, the field crickets could hardly help being what
they were, and at first he just threw them out as he did their larger warped
cousins.

      But after a time he suspected the chirpers he threw out were making their
way back into his house, and he came to a sobering compromise between his
distaste for violence and his need for sleep.

      Every stridulating annoyance he caught would be given one chance.  If the
cricket re-entered his house, it would be summarily squashed, and to distinguish
the first-time offenders from the career criminals, he marked those he released
with the white fingernail polish.

      After dotting his current capture, Rupert used a hair dryer--set on
cool--to dry the polish.  He then tossed the cricket out of his study window.
The entire process had taken less than two minutes.

      While some might think two *seconds* too long a time to waste considering
a bug's fate, Rupert DeNeuve was happy with his compromise.  It suited his
system, his temperament, his peculiar frame of mind.

      For Rupert, a peculiar man, had grown so from his beginnings as a peculiar
child.  He saw the world differently from the way it was seen by his classmates
or teachers.  At age 6 he surprised his parents with the question, "Why is there
Something instead of Nothing?"

      To which, of course, all answers were tautological.

      He wondered if others saw colors the same way he did.  He wondered if
others saw colors he could not.  And Rupert questioned everything--from plot
errors in *Romeo and Juliet* to the applicability of the Cause/Effect Paradox to
superluminal signaling.

      And Rupert wondered if the world in which he existed was the real Real
World--or whether there wasn't a greater existence just out of reach--just
around the next corner--that would explain the mysteries of the present All.

      Most persons, of course, had moments like that--moments of sudden
awareness where the self is juxtaposed against a bizarre reality--but moments
which never led to any satisfying revelation, each moment an epiphany denied.

      But where most would shrug off such episodes and go on with life, Rupert
would seek out such moments and savor them, and he trained his mind to sift for
these "cracks" in the fresco of existence.

      After several near-accidents in his car, he ordered his mind to suspend
the search while driving.

      But at other times, his mind was always busy at the task.

      So it was with no surprise that, after shutting the window and turning
back toward his desk, the feeling of unreality struck once more.

      Rupert relished the feeling.  At these times he felt more alive than at
any other, and this time the feeling was stronger than usual.

      He wallowed in the sensation, let it run the length of his body.  And his
mind, in its peculiar way, resonated with the feeling, and Rupert DeNeuve took
his hand and parted the curtain of existence and stepped through--

      --into a sparely-furnished office housing an old wooden desk on which a
feeble yellow lamp stood and glowed, and behind which a man in a gray burnoose
sat gazing at a stack of printed forms.

      Rupert stepped forward and harrumphed.

      The hood of the man's cloak fell back, revealing white hair, deep-set eyes
and a tangle of bushy brows.

      "What!" the old man gasped.  "Who are you?"

      Rupert told him.

      "Rupert DeNeuve ... Rupert DeNeuve ..."  The man shuffled through his
printed forms.

      "Confound it!"  The man drew himself back.  "Must be an error at Central.  Doesn't 

usually happen.  Wait.  I have some old blank registration forms, I think ..."

      The man opened a bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a single sheet.
  He put it on his blotter and dipped a quill into an inkwell--only the second
inkwell Rupert had ever seen; the other had been in a museum.

      "Rupert ... DeNeuve ..." the man repeated, writing the name on the form.
"Middle name?"

      "Alexander.  Who are you?"

      The man wrote down the name but ignored the question.  Instead, he pulled
out a watch.  "12:43 local time.  Less the two minutes you've been here makes
12:41."  He wrote that down as well.

      "Now," the man looked at Rupert, "I need the place of death."

      "What?"  Rupert's reaction fell somewhere between amusement, annoyance and
apprehension.

      "Place of death.  Surely you know where you died."

      "But I'm not dead!"

      "Of course you are.  Transitional amnesia is not unheard of, but it is
hardly common.  What's the last thing you remember?"

      Rupert folded his arms.  "I was in my study.  I had just thrown a cricket
from the window when the feeling of unreality--the feeling that what most people
perceive as reality is just a sliver of the whole--hit me.  And when my mind
figured out what to do, I reached out and separated the curtain between my world
and yours."

      The man's features, yellow under the lamplight, paled to match his ashen
brows.  "You jest!" he spat.  "You take advantage of an old man's humor!"

      Rupert shook his head.

      "Oh-my-God!"  The man put down his pen and tore up the paper with Rupert's
name and time of arrival.  And as he tore each bit, he stuffed it into his
mouth, chewed and swallowed.  "Must be--dimensional leakage--had the contractors
here--just last week--incompetents!"

      Done with his roughage, the old man rose from his chair and limped rapidly
to Rupert's side.

      "You must understand," the man began.  "You mustn't be here--yet.  If this
becomes known, there'll be an inquiry, maybe even a visit by Central, and in the
meantime I can kiss my job good-bye."

      Rupert prodded the old man.  "Is this Heaven?"

      "Yes!  No!  Dammit, don't ask questions!  You must go back, now!"

      "But I don't know how."

      The man spun him about, pushed him toward a faded, flower-printed wall and
raised a bony finger.  And as the old man lowered the finger, the office
unzipped into the familiar world Rupert knew.

      "That's my bathroom," Rupert said, "not my study."

      "Close enough," the old man said.  He put his hand against Rupert's back
and, with a force disproportionate to his ancient frame, popped Rupert through.

      And as the Other World zipped shut behind him, the last Rupert heard from
the old man was a terse, "Don't come back!"

                                                                   ***

Rupert stood still in his bathroom for a long time.  The adventure had confirmed
several guesses of his about the afterlife but had also spawned many more
questions.  Perhaps, if he unzipped this reality at a different spot, he would
arrive at a different place in the other.

      Rupert took off his shirt.  He was suddenly hot, as his experience had
charged him with adrenalin and had pushed his metabolism into overdrive.

      He started the shower and dropped his pants and shorts.  But as he twisted
to pull off his T-shirt, he caught a glimpse of something in the bathroom
mirror.  He turned his neck and looked, and an ironic laugh escaped his lips.

      There, between his shoulder blades, lay the ghostly-white imprint of the
old man's hand.
 
                                                      T H E   E N D

"Eliza's Quick-Drying Polar White" originally appeared in the Winter 2004 issue of Talebones (as by T. Rex) and is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

****************************

Joe Erhardt, while making his living in computer consulting, has
been writing fiction since before puberty and still has some
horrifically terrible evidence to prove this.  Since puberty,
he's had short fiction published in places like Keen Science Fiction!,
Maelstrom Speculative Fiction, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine,
and Talebones.
 
His most re-read SF novels:  We All Died at Breakaway Station by
Richard C. Meredith, Sinister Barrier by Eric Frank Russell and
Sleeping Planet, by William R. Burkett, Jr.  (Classics, he contends,
that are significantly underappreciated.)
 
His most valued writing book:  Getting the Words Right by
Theodore A. Rees Cheney.

*For the past twelve years, Joe has served as the dedicated leader of the Richwriter's writing group. Several of

its grateful authors have seen publication in the past few years and all wish to convey a quick thanks here.

****************************

May is Brain Cancer Awareness month!  Please visit our link,

Warning Signs of Brain Cancer 
that Survivors Want You to Know

At our sponsor site: GBM4cure

Thank you for visiting!  We'd love to start this mini-mag up again someday, and comments and submissions are always welcome.  Our contributors write for us at no charge.  If you like them, please pay them a visit!  If you have questions or a submission, email gbm4cure@gmail.com.

 

Tuesday's Truffle is...Truffle Trivia!

Ever Wonder Exactly What "Shea Butter" Is? (We Have.)

contributed by Hope Trotter

When we talk about skin care, we all think: lotion. Most people have a variety of bottles with many different skin care ingredients. The difference in all those bottles is what is in the lotion and what it actually does to your skin. A typical quick fix is mineral oil, or baby oil. These types of products create a barrier like plastic wrap on the skin. Many products use this because it is a cheap industrial by-product and is a quick fix for dry skin. The problem is the skin cannot breathe. A unknown fact is that mineral type oils cause wrinkling to occur because the skin is being smothered and not able to breathe normally. Have you ever left a vegetable in a plastic bag too long? The moisture from the vegetable has nowhere to go so it puckers and molds. Most of us would not willingly put our own skin through such torture, but unwittingly that is exactly what takes place with many products on the market.

Shea Butter is a natural product that is renowned for its skin softening and moisture retaining ability. Shea Butter is made with a moisture-rich butter obtained from the nut of the Karite tree in Central Africa, also known as Karite butter and African butter. Shea Butter is a superb emollient ideal for use in skin moisturizers. It helps enhance cell regeneration and capillary circulation, which assists in the healing of small wounds, cracks, and crevices in the skin.

What makes Shea butter so great for the skin is its high content of fatty acids. These fatty acids are indispensable for moisturizing and retaining the elasticity of the skin. By making up for lipid (fat) deficiency in the epidermal cells, Shea butter provides the skin with all the essential elements it needs for its good balance. Shea Butter also is high in Vitamin E which has an anti-elastic characteristic, which makes this type of product a very beneficial active ingredient against stretch marks.

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Hope Trotter wanted to be her own boss, in a business that she felt was natural and American made. She fell in love with Jordan Essentials, partially because the products are quality and manufactured in the Ozarks.  The products are family friendly and Jordan Essentials has something for each person in the family, plus products for the bath and body, and mineral makeup.  You can shop Hope's site at:  www.myjestore.com/4768

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May is Brain Cancer Awareness month!  Please visit our link,

Warning Signs of Brain Cancer 
that Survivors Want You to Know

At our sponsor site: GBM4cure

Thank you for visiting!  We'd love to start this mini-mag up again someday, and comments and submissions are always welcome.  Our contributors write for us at no charge.  If you like them, please pay them a visit!  If you have questions or a submission, email gbm4cure@gmail.com.

Thursday's Truffle is...A (Fabulous!) Photo Gallery!

Veterinarian Victoria Dye maintains a busy career doing relief work at small animal practices throughout central Virginia, but she never forgot her childhood love of photography.  Taking advantage of her travels to exotic locations during her senior year of vet school, she purchased a new camera and started to take pictures again.  Bitten by the photography bug, she took seminars in nature photography as the years went by, with impressive and beautiful results.  We'd like to thank Victoria for sharing some of her work with us here at The Chocolate Box.  You can see more photos and read more about her at www.victoriadye.com .  Victoria also teaches photography; you can find out about her classes here.

These are fantastic photos.  Enjoy!

We hope you enjoy these as much as we do.  Thanks again, Victoria!  For more photos by Victoria, be sure to check back on May 3rd.


****************************************************

May is Brain Cancer Awareness month!  Please visit our link,

Warning Signs of Brain Cancer 
that Survivors Want You to Know

At our sponsor site: GBM4cure

Thank you for visiting!  We'd love to start this mini-mag up again someday, and comments and submissions are always welcome.  Our contributors write for us at no charge.  If you like them, please pay them a visit!  If you have questions or a submission, email gbm4cure@gmail.com.

Tuesday's Truffle is...Healthy Living!

We know that eating lots of fruits and vegetables is good for the heart, but can a healthy diet really overcome the effect of genes that boost your risk for heart problems?

*posted with permission of the author.

Yes, it can, according to researchers in Canada who studied data on more than 27,000 people to figure out which contributes more to the risk of heart disease: environment or genes. The researchers focused on a group of people with specific genetic variants that are known to increase the risk of heart disease. They found that people who had the variants but ate lots of raw fruits and vegetables showed no increased heart risk, compared with those who had a less healthy diet, who were twice as likely to have a heart attack.  “We found that among those with the high-risk genotype, if they consumed a diet high in vegetables and fruits, their risk for heart attack did not increase despite their having the high-risk gene profile,” says Dr. Sonia Anand, a professor of medicine at epidemiology at McMaster University and one of the co-authors of the study published in PLoS Medicine.
 The scientists relied on two large sets of data, one that involved more than 8,100 people in 52 different countries, comparing those who had had heart attacks with similar people who had not, and another set from Finland including more than 19,000 participants who were surveyed every five years for heart-related deaths, heart attacks, angina, stroke or bypass and angioplasty procedures. Both groups also answered detailed questionnaires about what they ate.

The research team divided the enrollees in the first study into three diet groups based on their answers on 19 food-related questions. People were classified as eating primarily “western,” “oriental,” or “prudent” diets. Western diets included eggs, meats, fried and salty food, sugar and desserts; the oriental diet included more tofu, pickled foods, green leafy vegetables, soy sauce and less sugar. Finally, the prudent diet eaters followed what most of us would recognize as a heart-healthy menu: raw vegetables, fruits, nuts and some dairy products. Participants in the larger Finnish study were also placed in the prudent group, based on their intake of fruits, vegetables and berries.

The scientists further separated the participants within the various dietary groups by their genetic profiles. Specifically, the authors looked for four variants on a region of DNA on chromosome 9 that is known to boost heart attack risk by up to 20% in carriers, compared with those without the variants. People in the current study who had the high-risk genes — in this case, two versions of them, one from their mother and one from their father — were two times more likely to have a heart attack if their diet was lacking in fruits and veggies, compared with the “prudent” eaters.

That suggests that diet can make a real difference in heart disease risk, even when that risk is genetically based. “It means that perhaps our family history, or genetic risk, is modifiable,” says Anand. “Despite not being able to change our genetics, we are able to modify the effect or expression of our genes. That’s exciting.”The scientists were encouraged to study this effect after animal studies showed that heart muscle in mice bred without the high-risk genes had different responses to different diets. That served as hint that perhaps what we eat could alter the way the heart functions. How that happens isn’t clear yet, but it’s possible that eating lots of fruits and vegetables somehow change the way the genes in this region make their proteins or enzymes, prompting them to produce factors that may counteract the effects of heart risk factors like atherosclerosis.However it works, the fact that something within our control can combat the effects of disease-causing genes should be good news, especially for those of us who try valiantly to resist meats and processed foods and to stick with a more raw foods-focused diet. So, when it comes to heart health, it looks like Mother knew best: Eat your vegetables.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/12/eating-fruits-and-veggies-may-outwit-bad-heart-genes/#ixzz1lKVRoH75

We'd like to thank contributor Lucy French for this post.  You can visit Lucy on the web here:  
http://www.lucyfrenchjuiceplus.com




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