Elaine
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Posts posted by Elaine
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I don't know, Donna. I do know that I and many of us on this board and millions of others have been damaged. The least they could do is ask some of us what WE want to see done with the money!
elaine
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Dawn
I hope you find comfort knowing your Dad lives on in your memories and in your son! He was such a good man to many of us. I know he helped me when I needed it many a time. I am so saddened and know that my sadness does not compare to the loss his family has suffered. I posted your dad's obituary in our obituary forum, I hope that is ok. I did it out of my admiration for him. I know he would not want you to dwell in sadness, so live strong and happy for him!
love and fortitude in the coming days and years!
elaine
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Angie
You are the dearest of a dear freind. I have said it before, but I so wish we all could be together somehow. It doesn't seem fair that we are scattered about. I wish I could help you, too. Go with you to the Dr and help hold you up and laugh with you when the good news comes!
But pls know that we are with you and your Dad today in spirit!
love and fortitude
elaine
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I know I have been rough on poor Frank. Wondering if I should feel guilty or not. But then I thought, nah!
Next thing I know he will post a joke that will make us women go running for our secret cache of jokes hoping to find one worthy!
Bruce hit a few good ones over the weekend--just when I thought it wasn't possible!
Frank knows I love him! Scary, huh~~! But he can not win the joke war.
elaine
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Frank, I recently let you know you were scraping the bottom of the LOL barrel. I mean, I am not even SMILING!
But then again, maybe you are saving your good ones for Oct. because September is done for as far as the men go. I don't care who you try to wrestle out of your imagination to serve as judges! Anyway, I am looking forward to October myself!
But since I know we all need a laugh today, I hope someone comes up with something!
love
elaine
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Pasted so you don't have to register
State High Court Backs Damages in Smoker's Case
Decision against Philip Morris marks the first time the panel has upheld such an award.
By Myron Levin, Times Staff Writer
The California Supreme Court for the first time has upheld a damages award in a smoking and health case, dismissing an appeal by Philip Morris USA of a $10.5-million judgment won by a lung cancer victim who was a longtime smoker of its Marlboro brand.
The decision by the state's highest court brings Patricia Henley Reyes of Glendale a step closer to actually collecting on the verdict she won 5 1/2 years ago from the top U.S. cigarette maker.
"I'm delighted. There's justice in this world," Reyes said. She also expressed frustration that the battle seemed never-ending. "How many times do you have to win a case before you win a case?" she asked.
Reyes, 57, said she had created a foundation and planned to use most of her award to support anti-smoking campaigns and help children with respiratory ailments.
David Sylvia, a spokesman for Philip Morris parent Altria Group Inc., said Thursday that the company was disappointed and considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In February 1999, Reyes became the first of four California lung cancer victims to win sizable verdicts against cigarette makers. A new trial has been ordered in one of the cases, and the two others are in various stages of appeal.
Jurors in San Francisco Superior Court awarded Reyes $51.5 million, consisting of $1.5 million in compensatory and $50 million in punitive damages — more than three times the amount her lawyer had requested. A short time later, the judge in the case halved the punitive portion to $25 million.
Then last year, with the case still on appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a pivotal ruling in an unrelated case, Campbell vs. State Farm, that placed limits on punitive damages. According to the ruling, punitive damages typically should be no more than nine times the amount of a compensatory award.
Numerous verdicts throughout the country came under review, including Reyes' defeat of Philip Morris, in which the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages was about 17 to 1.
Last September, a state appeals court trimmed punitive damages in the Reyes case from $25 million to $9 million — prompting Philip Morris to seek a review by the state Supreme Court.
Ed Sweda, senior attorney with the Tobacco Products Liability Project, a Boston-based anti-smoking group, cheered the decision by the state Supreme Court to leave the award intact. He described the punitive damages as "quite reasonable and proportionate to the level of wrongdoing by Philip Morris that was proven in this case."
Reyes' lawyer Madelyn Chaber said she was hopeful of reaching closure in the case soon. "It's a 6-1 ratio" of punitive to compensatory damages, she said. "I don't think they [Philip Morris] have any other issues that the [u.S.] Supreme Court is going to care about."
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Further Classification of Lung Cancer may Better Predict Survival
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A new system of subcategorizing tumors in lung cancer patients may predict survival better than the current system of classification, according to a new study.
The current system classifies stage I tumors as either stage IA (smaller than three centimeters) or stage IB (larger than three centimeters). While past studies have shown differences in patient survival rates between these two groups, researchers now recognize a statistically significant difference in survival rates among patients with tumors smaller than three centimeters.
Researchers from Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York evaluated data on 7,620 individuals with stage I non-small cell lung cancer.
The researchers note over 12 years, cure rates for stage IA lung cancer increased as tumor size decreased. People with the smallest tumors, five millimeters to 15 millimeters in diameter, had the highest cure rate at 69 percent. Those with the largest tumors, over 45 mm, had a 43-percent cure rate.
The authors conclude, "Smaller tumor size at diagnosis is associated with improved curability within stage I non-small cell lung cancers. These results suggest that further subclassification by size within stage I may be important."
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Cat was supposed to come home sometime around the 17th (don't remember the day) but she hasn't posted, so I am wondering if anyone has heard from her! Last we heard, she still didn't know if her condo had been damaged. Anyway, if anyone has her number or has heard from her, let us know!!!
Thanks!
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Renee
May you know that your dear husband lives on in your memory and may you find comfort in the days ahead.
love and fortitude
elaine
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Hey! Great to hear from you Grumpy!
love and fortitude
elaine
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Tina
The trial sounds promising. I wish Charlie the best and hope all goes well on your trip.
love and fortitude
elaine
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I hope DaveS's daughter and family don't mind if I post a link to his online memorial and obituary.
Please know I do so out of respect and admiration for a man who many times kept my head above water. I will carry his kindness with me.
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Rich
In a way, I think it might be a blessing that you didn't have to go through all the other stuff! I wish you well with the upcoming tests!
elaine
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Thanks, that's good to know. I worried about that number and then when I researched it, I found that it was old info and thus didn't know for sure what to make of it!
Thanks
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The poet, Nikki Giovanni is a LC Survivor!
Nikki Giovanni - Author Spotlight - Interview
November 30, 2003
Ebony
She has explored the innermost depths of herself (surviving the loss of a lung to cancer) as well as global issues. The work of Nikki Giovanni has been as evolutionary as it has been revolutionary. One of the finest poets of our time, she was a member of the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s. Her early work still resonates with today's spoken word artists and hip-hop stars. But her career has been marked by movement. Nikki Giovanni, after all, is poetry in motion. Now, at age 60 and a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, she is releasing THE COLLECTED POETRY OF NIKKI GIOVANNI, 19691983 (William Morrow, $24.95).
Q: As you look back, is there any poem you'd write differently?
A: I don't have a lot of that, I have to tell you. As I used to say all the time, I am prolific, but I am not quick. So I didn't make rash decisions about my subject matter or how I was going to approach it I'm fortunate in that I not only am not embarrassed about my poetry, but I'm actually really fond of it.
Q: How long does it take to write the poem that you like? Well, I don't think about the poem as much as I do the book, and I write a book about every two years. I'm always fiddling with something. Right now, I'm late on my book on my cancer. But that's because it turned out to be a painful book. I hadn't expected that.
Q: What do yon hope to accomplish in doing it?
A: What I'm trying to do is share it because it's kind of unusual for a lung cancer person to survive. I thought I needed to, and I want to, say something about cancer, about being in front of it.
Q: But you said it's taking you a while.
A: Because it is painful. It's very hard to write how frightening it is. I'm just trying to find a tone that conveys what I want conveyed and that doesn't make me cry every time I sit down at my computer.
QCOPYRIGHT 2003 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
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A friend emailed me asking me where I got information about oncologists saying they would not do chemo (of course, in the abstract--who knows what they would do if DXed.) Anyway, I did refind some information, and thought I would share a bit of it, especially since it was old info and does not pertain to newer chemos. However, the one article does focus on cistoplatin as treatment for nsclc. I also read an article that quoted the LA Times as reporting that 75 per cent of oncs said they would not do chemo. However, I could not find the date of the supposed article nor the article itself, so I have no idea what this supposed statistic is based on and therefore find it dubious.
I am only posting this, not to discourage people, but to clarify something I wrote in another post, that even I now wonder how significant this is. I would think follow up surveys have been done since the late 1980s. but I haven't found them, if so.
I will paste a section of the article and then put a link to the article below it, which has the citations etc.
The whole article is interesting as is the Site, which also has an article about radiation.
"In 1986, McGill Cancer Center scientists sent a questionnaire to 118 doctors who treated non-small-cell lung cancer. More than 3/4 of them recruited patients and carried out trials of toxic drugs for lung cancer. They were asked to imagine that they themselves had cancer, and were asked which of six current trials they themselves would choose. 64 of the 79 respondents would not consent to be in a trial containing cisplatin, a common chemotherapy drug. Fifty eight found all the trials unacceptable. Their reason? The ineffectiveness of chemotherapy and its unacceptable degree of toxicity14. "
The more familiar these doctors were with the treatment the less likely they were to accept it for themselves.
Similar findings came from two other studies published in 198715,16.
A study of how expert physicians would wish to be treated for genito-urinary cancer found a similar situation in 198817.
In relation to the treatment of 252 advanced breast cancer patients one author observed that the "risk" of being treated by cytotoxic therapy was three times as high in the terminal stage as in the remainder of the patients18. As Abel points out, this does not point to the use of a therapy that is particularly geared to patients’ wellbeing6.
In March 1989 German biostatistician Dr Ulrich Abel himself investigated physicians’ choices in cancer treatment. He received 150 replies to a questionnaire sent to oncologists and research units around the word, trying to gauge these doctors’ feelings about the use of chemotherapy in advanced carcinoma. He reported that "the personal views of many oncologists seem to be in striking contrast to communications intended for the public"1,6."
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The following is pretty scary. Even if you pay for the test, your ins company still might not pay for the treatment the tests show would be most effective:
Excerpt:
Only a few laboratories offer the cell-death CSRA tests, and they are expensive -- costing $2,000 or more. The tests often aren't paid for by insurance. Worse, if a lab test reports that an unusual combination of drugs is most likely to work, an insurance company may decline to pay for it because it's not standard.
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Ellen
Great article. Thanks!
elaine
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Rich
Just curious--how did you get dxed? How did you go straight to a surgeon without meeting with a tumor board, who would have had the PETs etc to look for mets. Did you get DXed by a Primary Care and/or a pulmonologist? Did you have lymph node involvement? I lived in SD many years, just also wondering where you had your surgery?
All and all, I think it is great you had the surgery! Best wishes that nothing shows up!
eliane
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I hate to chime in here again, but I do want to say that I, too, do not want a Dr telling anyone something he or she does not tell me. Actually, it is a big fear of mine that this will be done. Besides the reasons that Fay and Lisa gave, to me it would put an extraordinary amount of pressure on one of my family members. How could they hold such knowledge and have an honest relationship with me? There has to be trust. And that goes between patient and Dr too.
If I am incapacitated in any way, I have chosen who makes decisions for me etc. and I have to be able to trust that the medical community will honor that. Not for me, but for my children.
Now this is what I want. but I can't say what others want, such as the man you spoke of in your post. I do not know how you figure this out other than to be blunt and ask how that is to be dealt with.
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OH Shawn,
My heart aches for you right now. Your mom is a special person who fought long and hard and who just wanted so much to see you on your way in this world. She wrote so highly of you and your future and I know that you meant so much to her. Please keep her love with you always. She lives on in your memories and will keep a watchful eye on you. Please let us know how you are doing when you can. I know you have other family but I hope that you will see us as a part of your family, too. There are other young people here who lost their parents or parent and maybe they can be of help to you.
love and fortitude
elaine
JustAKid is in the hospital
in GENERAL
Posted
Beth
Hope you are home and feeling better !
love an fortitude
elaine