Asthma Drug Prevents Spread of Breast Cancer, Study Finds

this is interesting.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 3, 2010) — A drug commonly used in Japan and Korea to treat asthma has been found to stop the spread of breast cancer cells traditionally resistant to chemotherapy, according to a new study led by St. Michael’s pathologist Dr. Gerald Prud’homme.

“Tranilast, a drug approved for use in Japan and South Korea, and not in use in Canada or the U.S., has been used for more than two decades to treat asthma and other allergic disorders including allergic rhinitis and atopic dermatitis,” Dr. Prud’homme says. “Now, our study is the first to discover it not only stops breast cancer from spreading but how the drug targets breast cancer cells.”

Researchers grew breast cancer stem cells, which give rise to other cancer cells, in culture. The cells were injected into two groups of mice, including one group, which was also treated with tranilast. Dr. Prud’homme and his colleagues found the drug reduced growth of the primary cancerous tumour by 50 per cent and prevented the spread of the cancer to the lungs. Researchers also identified a molecule in the cancer cell that binds to tranilast and appears to be responsible for this anti-cancer effect.

Tranilast binds to a molecule known as the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), which regulates cell growth and some aspects of immunity. This makes the drug beneficial in treating allergies, inflammatory diseases and cancer.

“For the first time, we were able to show that tranilast shows promise for breast cancer treatment in levels commonly well-tolerated by patients who use the drug for other medical conditions,” Dr. Prud’homme said. “These results are very encouraging and we are expanding our studies. Further studies are necessary to determine if the drug is effective against different types of breast and other cancers, and its interaction with anti-cancer drugs.

Dr. Prud’homme says clinical trials in cancer patients may be possible within a few years. The study is published in the journal PLoS ONE.

Cancer Therapies Affect Cognitive Functioning Among Breast Cancer Survivors

altho i haven’t had chemo or radiation for my cancer, i also have problems with cognitive function.

Article Date: 24 Apr 2012 – 0:00 PDT

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the University of South Florida and University of Kentucky have found that breast cancer survivors who have had chemotherapy, radiation or both do not perform as well on some cognitive tests as women who have not had cancer.

They published their study in CANCER.

“Survivors of breast cancer are living longer, so there is a need to better understand the long-term effects of cancer therapies, such as chemotherapy and radiation,” said study lead author Paul B. Jacobsen, Ph.D., associate center director for Population Sciences.

To carry out their study, the researchers recruited 313 women being treated by either chemotherapy or radiotherapy for early stage breast cancer at Moffitt Cancer Center and the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center. Those who had undergone treatment for cancer were tested six months after treatment and then tested again 36 months after having completed treatment.

They also recruited a control group of women who did not have cancer. These participants were also tested at six months and 36 months.

Participants in all groups were within five years of age, and breast cancer patients were matched with noncancer patients who lived in their same ZIP codes. Participants were tested cognitively with respect to processing speed (quick task completion under pressure), executive functioning (ability to shift cognitive sets and solve novel problems), the two domains expected to be most affected by chemotherapy. They were also tested with regard to verbal abilities.

“Our findings were partially consistent with prior research,” explained Jacobsen. “We found that chemotherapy-treated patients performed worse than noncancer controls in processing speed, executive functioning and verbal ability. These domains may be the domains most affected by chemotherapy.”

The also found test results for the radiotherapy group to be similar to the results of those in the chemotherapy group. Additionally, they discovered that the noncancer group improved in these cognitive abilities over time while the chemotherapy and radiotherapy groups did not. There were no differences in performance between the radiotherapy and chemotherapy groups, noted the researchers.

The researchers commented that they were fortunate for having included the radiotherapy groups because their results were so similar to the chemotherapy group. Had that group not been included, conclusions could have been drawn to suggest that the cognitive differences between the noncancer group and the chemotherapy group were specific to chemotherapy.

“Since patients report cognitive problems that interfere with their daily activities, early workups should include tests to determine cognitive functioning prior to treatment,” concluded Jacobsen. “Future research also needs to investigate factors that may affect both chemotherapy patients and those receiving radiotherapy. Providers may wish to communicate that such effects can accompany chemotherapy and radiation therapy.”

i haven’t posted anything personal to this blog for some time, because i haven’t been worrying about when my cancer will return.  i’ve been getting on with my life and following the urges that i used to repress, because cancer has taught me that time is short.  no matter how long it is. (and this is free information even to those who don’t face death with every twinge – time goes by faster every year, it’s not just a metaphor.)

one of the things i learned early in my dance with death was that i had to be ruthless with my health.  at first i had to be ruthless because i was fragile and had no stamina at all, and could be drained by the slightest thing.  so i would hang up on a family member who loves to call and make me feel bad about myself.  just hang up.  no arguing, no asking them to tone it down.  just click.  and when they called back and started berating me all over, click.  ruthless.  i don’t care what agenda you have, if it makes me feel bad, even slightly, i’m going to make you stop.  i’ll walk away.  i’ll put on the brakes and turn the engine off and sit stonily until you get out.  fucking ruthless.

and this is good.

i’ve been in abusive relationships most of my life (until i got cancer).  starting with a classically dysfunctional family of origin, thru 3 abusive long-term relationships – no, 4; and there was that string of 20-minute boyfriends, but they were just reminders.  at the moment i’m working up a piece of fiction that stars abusive characters and even abusive societies.  so i’m studying abusive relationships, abusive traits, authoritarians, narcissists, histrionic personality disorder.  all of which are pretty maddening to encounter.  we see the same thing in contemporary politics, and what’s going on right now really pisses me off.  so i’m dealing with a whole lot of angry energy.

because i’m facing all the abuse i’ve submitted myself to over the years.  and that makes me mad.

and today being a full moon, i had a big instance of being mad with someone very close to me who is all of those links above at the one time, and who, while whining about their innocence, was sticking the blade in and turning.

but i’m being ruthless, and i’m not putting up with it.  so the whining fell on deaf ears, and all the things that are my fault…lalalalalalala i can’t hear you.

it felt bad being there; i’d been roped into it at the last minute because it was an emergency, and i was being berated for not being supportive enough and not in quite the right way.

i didn’t argue, because it was falling on deaf ears.  people who are like all those links above will not accept, or hear, that they could be wrong, or that the bad things that happen to them (as a taste of their own medicine) could ever be their fault.  so it’s pointless to tell them how they’re wrong.  even tho they’re begging you to tell them what they’re doing to deserve such treatment from you (that treatment being when you just sit there and refuse to be drawn into the drama).  i tried, just to be fair, to voice what they might be doing wrong, but was immediately drowned out.

and my torment was cut short because while berating me, they were calling and texting others to come to the rescue, and had me drop them at a convenience store to wait for someone else to pick them up.

i had one hell of a wave of anger as i drove home.  and wondered how best to use it.

i have been advised by people who are just like all those links up there, that i am an angry and weak person, and also anxious, and i should take xanax to calm me down.  but i don’t really want to calm down except by spending the energy.  i don’t want it to eat away at me.  that nasty ache in the gut will kill you if you let it sit there.  breathe deep and shove out it thru your pores.

i did a lot of that on the way home.

and then i reflected about how numbing that kind of anger is the wrong way to get rid of it.  the energy of that anger can be turned to good, can be used as passion, can be used creatively.

but rather than come home and slash black paint  on canvas, i decided to write this blog post.

because when you have had cancer, and the cancer was a reflection of self hatred, then you just can’t afford to spend a lot of time doubting yourself, wondering if you were too hard on them, should give them a second chance – well, a hundredth chance.  you have to look at the bad feeling in your gut, and then look to see what triggered it.  and this particular bad feeling was someone who insisted that i give my power to them because they needed it more than me, because i am a bad person. specifically, i was being required to give unconditional support and approval to a bunch of behaviors that i find painful, stupid, and unthinking.

and of course this post lacks any kind of point because i’m pulling my punches, being vague, pretending. so i don’t hurt someone who might read it.  but this is a (see links) kind of person, and nothing i do is going to be good enough, so why am i only alluding?

because the anger has faded, and now i’m just tired.

Gas-filled aspirin is a potent anti-cancer drug

well, here’s interesting news.  it’s good for cancer at a lower dose than you take for heart health.  now, where do you get nosh-aspirin?

Updated 17:20 06 March 2012 by Andy Coghlan

Loading aspirin with gas dramatically boosts its cancer-fighting ability and might even blunt the harmful side effects of taking aspirin every day.

Aspirin has been shown to be effective in reducing the incidence of cancer: a trial last year showed that taking it daily for at least two years reduced the risk of colorectal cancer. Just 18 out of 427 people taking aspirin developed the cancer compared with 30 out of 434 on a placebo. But it can also cause ulcers and bleeding in the gut, which doesn’t necessarily make it a good option for healthy people.

The gut lining protects itself from damage by producing nitric oxide and hydrogen sulphide. So Khosrow Kashfi at The City College of New York developed NOSH-aspirin, which produces both gases as it breaks down.

Aspirin is known to damage cancer cells, which is thought to be behind its preventative effect. To test the new drug, Kashfi’s team added it to cells from 11 types of human tumour, including colon, pancreas, breast, lung and prostate cancer.

“It turned out to be significantly more potent than aspirin alone,” says Kashfi. With colon cancer, for example, NOSH-aspirin was 100,000 times more potent than the original drug, causing the cells to stop dividing, wither and die.

It is not yet clear what caused the increased potency but the results suggest that lower doses would be needed to fight cancer than for regular aspirin.

Further work by Kashfi showed that the new compound appears not to be harmful to animals (Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, in press). In mice with human colon cancer, daily doses for 18 days reduced tumour size by 85 per cent with no gut damage. “We could be looking at a human trial within two years,” he says.

“I welcome anything that promises to retain the health benefits of aspirin with fewer side effects,” says John Burn at Newcastle University in the UK. “But you have to be cautious whenever you consider giving people who are healthy something for a long time,” he says.

Journal reference: Medicinal Chemistry Letters, DOI: 10.1021/ml300002m

Hopes rise for new cancer treatment after tests with electromagnetism

this is very promising.  looks like they’re using a tens unit, but i’d have to do more research, like reading the actual report instead of this article, which i’m reposting, as it is important.

Robin McKie

The Observer, Saturday 7 January 2012

Early trials on patients with advanced liver cancer show low-level fields could shrink tumours

Scientists have used low-intensity electromagnetic fields to treat cancer patients in trials which they say could lead to the development of a new type of anti-tumour therapy.

Patients hold a spoon-shaped antenna in their mouths to deliver a very low-intensity electromagnetic field in their bodies. In trials of patients with advanced liver cancer, the therapy – given three times a day – resulted in long-term survival for a small number of those monitored, the team has reported in the British Journal of Cancer. Their tumours shrank, while healthy cells in surrounding tissue were unaffected.

However, the scientists – from the US, Brazil, France and Switzerland – also stressed that the technique was still in its infancy and would require several years for further trials to take place. “This is a truly novel technique,” said the team’s leader, Professor Boris Pasche of the University of Alabama, Birmingham. “It is innocuous, can be tolerated for long periods of time, and could be used in combination with other therapies.”

Pasche added that he had obtained permission from the US Food and Drug Administration to carry out trials on large groups of patients and was talking to companies in the US, Asia, South America, Russia and Europe about raising funds for future research.

In 2009, Pasche and his colleagues published results in the Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research which showed that low-level electromagnetic fields at precise frequencies – ranging from 0.1Hz to 114kHz – halted cancer cell growth in small numbers of patients. Different cancers responded to electromagnetic fields of different frequencies. Cells in surrounding, healthy tissue were unaffected.

The exact mechanism for this process was not explained in the paper. However, results of recent experiments by the team – using cancer cell cultures in the laboratory and published in the British Journal of Cancer – suggest that low-level electromagnetic fields interfere with the activity of genes in cancer cells. In specific cases, this affected the ability of cancer cells to grow and divide. The spread of tumours halted and in some cases they began to shrink.

“This is extremely exciting,” said Pasche. “We think the technique could also be used to treat breast tumours and possibly other forms of cancer.”

The use of electromagnetic fields was also welcomed, cautiously, by Eleanor Barrie of Cancer Research UK: “This research shows how specific low frequencies of electromagnetic radiation can slow the growth of cancer cells in the lab. It’s still unclear why the cancer cells respond in this way, and it’s not yet clear if this approach could help patients, but it’s an interesting example of how researchers are working to find new ways to home in on cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed.”

The use of electromagnetic fields to treat tumours may seem surprising given recent controversy over claims that fields generated by mobile phones and electricity pylons can trigger cancers and leukaemia. However, Pasche stressed that the intensity of the fields used in his team’s experiments were between 100 and 1,000 times lower than those from a mobile phone. “In any case, the evidence produced from major studies of users of these phones does not suggest there is a clearly identifiable risk posed by these electromagnetic fields,” he said.

i have started getting headaches.  i’ve had four or five at this point, in the past six months.

i will shift something subtle in my neck.  the first time it happened while stretching for a kiss.  this time it happened sitting up reading a book late last night.  the first i’ll know about the headache is a tiny little nag of discomfort, somewhere in the nether regions of my neck and shoulders. by nether regions, i mean my consciousness, but i could also mean my aura.  not yet quite physical, but there constantly, first in the corner of my awareness, and at the height of it, consuming most of my brain, so that i can think of nothing else but this little thrum of discomfort.

it’s only a headache, after all, but it becomes overwhelming.

it starts mild, but then takes over more and more of my consciousness, and the more i move, the worse it gets.  if i should get up and try to walk the dogs, or anything other than going to the bathroom and back, then i will get nauseous and have to throw up, or at least gag a lot.  i will also have diarrhea from dealing with a low-grade headache all night.

the only cure is to sleep.  that is, being up and about only makes it worse. i can’t keep down any aspirin or stronger, so i don’t know about drugs.

it’s not really sleep.  it’s dozing, diving as far down into sleep as possible, but always aware of the center of pain.  i’m always adjusting my neck, thinking i’ll finally pop whatever vertebra it is and i can go back to normal.

my dreams are instructive.  they’re all about working out problems, finding precise answers, making small adjustments.

this afternoon i realized that the central conflict in my latest novel is the split between male/female yin/yang.  this was something shown me in one of these dreams.

i’ve noticed a direct correlation between noise and headache pain.  when i’m asleep, there’s no input, and no paint.  when i’m dreaming, the pain is talking to me.  when i’m lying there dozing half awake, i’m constantly aware of the pain.  and when there’s outside input – the dogs bark, jim answers the phone – my head hurts with the amount of processing i have to do on the input.  the more i think, the more it hurts.  the more of noise i have to deal with, the more i have to think.  is this just some quantum threshhold of awareness?

finally i’d been in bed for six hours, and slept all i could.

as he rubbed my shoulders, i could feel the tension in muscles down my back, like thick ropy worms, each one painful and swollen.  everywhere he moved his hands to rub – around my clavicles, over my shoulder joints, around the front of my neck – i could feelnew thorbbing pains, new muscles feeling congested and starved of oxygen.

i kept going ooh internally as he swept across a muscle, thinking this is the one that’s causing it.  but i didn’t have the energy to say anything, so he kept moving without any direction from me.

he kept away from the part of my neck where all the pain seems to be coming from.  until the last.  then it felt like it wanted to be touched, so i asked him to rub those muscles that attach to the base of your skull and run all the way down the back.

jim’s energy is strong – he can’t wear watches – and when he rubs my back i can feel it in my organs, way deeper than where he’s touching.  i found myself thinking about all the bodyworkers i know who work with their minds instead of their energy, thinking their way around someone’s body.  i wondered if i shouldn’t become certified in something so that we could rpactice together.  and then i realized that i was thinking, and released the thoughts by concentrating on what jim was doing.

when i was learning a particular soft-massage renegade rolfing technique, they liked to caution you that the work would radically change your body in subtle ways, and that you shouldn’t rely on your normal sense of balance after a session.  but that was rather presumptive of their healing skills.  i always went out and climbed on the rocks down next to the sea after my sessions, laughing about it.  but i daren’t lean over suddenly after my spot massage from jim, because i am half out of my body with the release of attachments.

no matter what he has done to me, the amount of healing i took in, i still have to release the kink in my neck and let everything go back to normal now.  myself.

Cancer cells poisoned with sugar

anecdotal evidence says a diet full of sugar feeds cancer.  i haven’t researched that, so i’m uncertain, but here’s something that might work against it.

04 December 2011IT’S a heavy price to pay for a sweet tooth. Researchers have tricked glucose-eating cancer cells into consuming a sugar that essentially poisons them – it leaves a “suicide” switch within the cells open to attack.

“Most cancer cells rely almost exclusively on glucose to fuel their growth,” says Guy Perkins of the University of California at San Diego. With Rudy Yamaguchi of Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, Perkins found the cells would take up a similar sugar called 2-deoxyglucose. But this sugar physically dislodges a protein within the cell that guards a suicide switch. Once exposed, the switch can be activated by a drug called ABT-263. This kills the cell by liberating proteins that order it to commit suicide (Cancer Research, DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-11-3091).

The approach could ultimately spell doom for several types of cancer, including liver, lung, breast and blood. In mice, the treatment made aggressive human prostate cancer tumours virtually disappear within days.

Yamaguchi and Perkins are now hoping to mount a clinical trial at UC San Diego.

Neurological Impairment Associated With Chemotherapy

i’m so glad my little voice told me not to do chemo and radiation.

Article Date: 14 Nov 2011 – 17:00 PST

A report in the November issue of the Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals outlines cases of women who survived breast cancer and showed neurological impairment. The problem seems to be markedly worse in those who received chemotherapy compared with those that did not.

Breast cancer is one of the most common public health issues, with global incidence estimated at 39 per 100,000 individuals per year. Although primary Breast Cancer has not in the past been associated with neurological problems, a growing body of evidence supports the case that patients are at increased risk for altered brain structure and function.

Shelli R. Kesler, Ph.D., and colleagues at Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, Calif., conducted an observational study to find out if profiles of brain activation were different among breast cancer survivors treated with or without chemotherapy, compared with healthy control women. The study included more than sixty women matched for age and other demographic variables :

• 25 women with breast cancer who received chemotherapy
• 19 women with breast cancer who did not receive chemotherapy
• 18 healthy female controls

The women were asked to perform various tasks, and the researchers used functional MRI to measure activation in several areas of the brain.

The report states :

“Women with BC demonstrated significantly reduced activation in the left middle dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and premotor cortex compared with healthy controls … The chemotherapy group also demonstrated significantly reduced left caudal lateral prefrontal cortex activation and increased perseverative errors and reduced processing speed compared with the other two groups.”

In addition it was deemed possible that chemotherapy may well affect brain function according to the person’s level of education and with increased age. Clearly a side effect of chemotherapy that is seldom discussed, would appear to be a duller brain.

The report concludes that :

“This study provides further evidence that primary breast cancer may cause measurable brain injury … Women treated with chemotherapy may show additional prefrontal deficits and have difficulty compensating for neurobiological changes such that they also show impaired executive function.”

Written by Rupert Shepherd

this is the transcript of a conversation i had with a friend about the absolute fatigue you can feel after treatment.  this lasts long after the treatment ends, and it feels like you’ll never have any energy again.  but it does come back.  others will notice before you do.

You may remember [name] (age 73) got cancer last easter.  She had the lump removed, had radiotherapy, and has a very good prognosis, partly due to her age and also had no spread into the lymph nodes.  However, she is now totally exhausted almost all the time and, since she is one of those skinny, tiny, busy women, she is finding it very difficult to cope.  I would say she is dealing with depression for the first time in her life.  How does she compare to your reactions after surgery and after?  Did you have this problem and, if so, how did you deal with it?

yes, fatigue is a big problem.  mine lasted more than a year, where i had to drag myself around the block and stop twice.

there’s nothing for it except to baby yourself and continue.  the continuing is the important part, but also the babying, because you need coddling when you’re recovering from medical shit and also dealing with death.

depression is totally normal, and a necessary process right now.  when you’re going thru something like this, you don’t have the spirit to deal with anything that’s not muted.  distractions are irritating.  and there’s so much to think about and accomplish, even while your perspective on everything is going to shit.

the will to live will out (or not) and the energy will come back, but slowly.  it’s a patience thing.

i hope this helps, feel free to come back for more.

Thanks for this.  I have passed it on to her along with a couple of other bits and pieces I found on the internet.  I often think the recovery part of illness is the hardest, when your body needs all that mixture of effort and cosseting to regain its strength.

fall  is here in earnest.  we just had a tropical storm bring a bunch of the leaves down, and now all that’s left are the pecans and acorns.  it’s a bumper crop this year, and the berries are heavy on the bushes, so i’m figuing a very hard winter here, and am  preparing for that ice storm to take the power out for three days.

i feel for your friend.  her age makes her fragile to be recovering from surgery and chemo, but if she takes it one day at a time and learns to find something to feel joy over, then whatever remains of her life will be pleasant and bring happiness. that’s the key to depression, at least mine.  keep moving, and find something no matter how small to be happy about.  and even when i only gave myself a couple of years to live, that attitude made it bearable, even wondrous to  be alive.  and slowly as my energy came back, the attitude laid the groundwork for my current vibrancy and joy.

when jim’s wife died, he threw himself into fixing up the other house and preparing to sell the one they were in.  they’d been planning to move right before she got sick, so he stuck to that, and spent all his depression-energy on laying the groundwork for the next phase in his life.  it was a very productive way to handle it, and it brought him a side benefit – me.

i said ‘whatever remains of her life’ but that doesn’t mean as bad as it sounds.  having cancer, you accept that your life has an end, and if you have cancer long enough, you find that it hasn’t ended yet and you’ve got to get on with it.  we all die, but people who haven’t faced death haven’t really lived.  that’s what a death sentence gives you, a better perspective.

depression, jim always reminds me, is masked anger.  you swallow the anger because you can’t direct it, and it brings you down.  she’s not suffering from depression per se, but fatigue, which is different.  if she can live with the fatigue, and baby herself, it will pass.  depression is a side effect, and can kill you.  so she’s got to be careful not to let it go there.  that’s why treating yourself like a baby, like your demented little sister, is so helpful.  because you don’t get depressed when someone else is having trouble; you care more and go slower and be more gentle.  and that’s what you need.  especially if you don’t have someone who will do it for you.

another process involved in having cancer is a thorough review of your life.  the situations you’ve lived with, the people you’ve put up with, the indignities you’ve suffered.  while you’re healthy and everything is fine, it seems like you can put up with these little slings and arrows.  but once you get cancer, you realize that these indignities are at the root of what’s making you sick, and you learn to be more ruthless with your life.  you start to hang up on people who just want to harangue you over the phone.  you don’t let people impose on you as much.  you get angry when someone asks you to endure something.  you start speaking your mind.  you start standing up for yourself.  and why not?  you’ll be dead soon, why should you put up with all this nonsense when it just drains the little energy you have?

in the years after i got cancer, i jettisoned a few false friends, stopped doing work for other people, learned to terminate conversations when i started feeling bad about them, and learned to tell my mother exactly what i was thinking about what she’d just said.

it improved my life immeasurably.  i was no longer a victim, i was much more in control of my emotions and my responses, and didn’t have to get all tied up inside about things that really don’t matter when you’re going to die.  it’s great to have that perspective; if more  people had it, there wouldn’t nearly be the nonsense in the world that we have to put up with.

it’s been quite a while since i’ve put anything personal up on my blog.  i have a whole shitload of blogs, and usually i put related things together – fabric, quantum theory, tales of bad people, food and medical industry crime.  but i don’t usually write anything very personal.

well, that’s a lie.  i’m all over everything i write.  especially in my fabric blog, where i talk about the art i do and how i do it.  but i don’t usually talk about my self.

and here’s the place to do it.  this is my ‘i’m going to die’ blog, and if there’s anything more personal, it’s sex, and i haven’t gotten around to a blog on that one…

so here’s where i talk about what’s happening personally.  and since it’s the autumn of the year, i’ve just gone thru a seasonal buildup of energy and achievement, and am now coming down off it.  in the past, i have gotten sick after my summer of activity.  but i’m not that person anymore.  touch wood i don’t get sick.

never have, aside from asthma, until i gave myself cancer.  and that was ten years ago at this point.

the last few months have seen a flurry of completed projects, some of which were a year old at that point, a hectic vacation with my sister, the concerted run-up to dragoncon and the frantically fun labor day dragoncon weekend, and then several art applications to accomplish (takes a week to do an application, especially when you only figure out at the last minute that the artist statement you’ve worked so hard on can only be 300 words or less).

vacation, still working hard

and the big change – my brother has gone home.  he was staying with us since the spring; work being so hard to find where he was living.  but with hard work and tons of networking connections, he has made it viable to go home and work, so he left last night with his truck packed to the top, and now i’ve got a spare bedroom again.

this means i can run around the house naked again.

but for that, i have no complaints.  living with my brother was like living with one of my best friends.  not like living with family.  it was a blessing, and i got time to spend with someone i love that i wouldn’t have otherwise had.  and when you’re going to die, this is important.

but anyway, his now being gone means i’ve got space in my psychic life, and it’s a bit echoey.

while i wait for my creative juices to settle on a distinct path (finish those baby dresses, start on next year’s dragoncon paintings, paint some more clouds with wax), i am helping jim with his entry for this year’s national gallery portrait contest.  it’s a biennial thing, and he’s entered it twice before, with no result.  jim likes to point out that he’s been kicked out of all the best shows.

the first time he entered a portrait of his granddaughter, a nice sitting on the couch in the living room, looking as bored as she tends to look.

the second time, he entered a portrait of our friend asha dancing the world into creation.

but this time we’re going to do something more personal.

the subjects in the first two years were young, attractive women.

this year he’s painting me.

me as medusa