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- Alicia Keys -....back to hosting! :)........poke, scan and check........song of the day: Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here....What Are Fibroadenomas?Fibroadenomas are one of the findings that can be seen on your mammogram. They are benign (not cancerous) breast tumors that are made of glandular and fibrous breast tissue. Fibroadenomas can occur alone, in groups or as a complex. If you have multiple or complex fibroadenomas, this may raise your risk of breast cancer slightly.Can You Feel A Fibroadenoma?While doing your regular breast self-exam, you may feel a breast fibroadenoma. These feel firm, round, smooth, rubbery, and are movable. They are so mobile that women sometimes refer to them as “breast mice” because they tend to run away from your fingers. A fibroadenoma may feel tender, especially right before your period, when it may swell due to hormonal changes. What Sizes Are Fibroadenomas?Fibroadenomas range in size from one to five cm, (0.39 inches to nearly two inches). Giant fibroadenomas can be the size of a small lemon, about 15 cm (5.9 inches).
What Do Fibroadenomas Look like on a Mammogram?
Fibroadenomas appear as round or oval smooth-edged masses. The outline of the mass will be clearly defined, not blurry. Sometimes they are accompanied by coarse calcifications. Fibroadenomas can look like cysts or a well-contained tumor.
How Can You Be Sure It Is a Fibroadenoma?
Your doctor or radiologist may send you to have an ultrasound study done. This is because a fibroadenoma will be easier to distinguish from other tissue, because of the way it responds to sound waves. It will appear as a dark area, with a definite outline, homogeneous, round or oval, and may have smooth-edged bumps. If the ultrasound doesn’t give a definite result, the next study may be an MRI (magnetic resonance image). The most conclusive test is a fine needle biopsy or a core needle biopsy, to get a sample of the cells for a pathologist to examine.
Treatment or Removal of Fibroadenomas
Since fibroadenomas are benign, treatment will vary depending on your diagnosis. If it is small, painless, remains the same size, and a biopsy shows no problems, you would not need further treatment, but may have follow-up ultrasounds. However, if it is large (more than three cm), painful, growing, or a biopsy results in atypical (very active) cells, you can have it surgically removed with a lumpectomy. If you qualify, you can have fibroadenomas removed with a laser ablation (using heat) or cryoablation (freezing). In-situ ablation of fibroadenomas can be done in-office, leaves tiny scars, and has fast recovery.
What Causes Fibroadenomas?
The exact cause of fibroadenomas is unknown. They seem to be influenced by estrogen, because they appear most often in premenopausal or pregnant women, or in women who are postmenopausal and taking HRT (hormone replacement therapy). Most fibroadenomas come and go during your menstrual cycle, when your hormone levels are changing.
When Do Fibroadenomas Appear?
These are most common in women who are from 15 to 30 years old and in pregnant women. Fibroadenomas occur in 10 percent of all women, but in 20 percent of African-American women. They are much less common in postmenopausal women, unless the women is on estrogen therapy. About 10 percent of all fibroadenomas will disappear over time, and twenty percent of them will recur. If they don’t disappear, they usually stop growing when they reach two or three cm.....taken from About.com....break
- Meiko -'Our first nuke plant by 2021''....a nuclear plant was sorely needed to meet the country’s accelerating energy needs and ensured its energy security....'And what about those natives displaced to build more hydro dam(n)s? They better make sure the homeless little froggies and macaques are getting free electricity too!I guess 10 is not enough that we need a freaking nuke plant!'....declining to reveal the possible sites and the total power deliverable, Chin said the nuclear plant needed to be built in an area with high power demand....'Oh, right....in KL! How 'bout that....Time for lucky bastards like me to seriously consider migrating.... :)
Kaboom?break
4 MINUTES- Madonna -....taken from The Star today....KUALA TERENGGANU: The state government will introduce a “1Toilet” policy in a move to liberalise education, where teachers – and even principals – will soon have to share toilets with their students.
State Education, Higher Learning, Human Resource, Science and Technology Committee chairman Ahmad Razif Abd Rahman said the policy was mooted in line with the 1Malaysia concept, and teachers and students could have a feeling of “oneness”.
“We want students to have a sense of belonging that we believe would inspire them to excel further in their education. - Yup, success was never our own will.
“When students share the toilets with the teacher, they (students) will believe that they are on par with academicians and this automatically invokes a sense of being important to an organisation, which, in this case, is the school,” he said here yesterday. - And share our darkest secrets in between farts....p.s. Mr K., it's OK to dress like a woman.
“We are not compelling the school authorities to apply the policy. It is their prerogative,” said Ahmad Razif. - I say, how brilliant!
“So far, we have one school in Hulu Terengganu that has implemented the policy a few days ago. It has received positive feedback from the school management although it is still premature for us to evaluate its efficiency,” he said.
Ahmad Razif said that under the policy, teachers and students would also be encouraged to sit within a common space at school canteens during recess. - Them teachers must have endured some whippin' all those times. Guess we are that stupid, not knowing there's a rule against enjoying a meal with your teacher.
“This means that teachers and students will mingle freely during recess,” he said. - And maybe play ting-ting together.
Ahmad Razif said the policy had initially been proposed by Mentri Besar Datuk Ahmad Said earlier this year but that it took some time for it to be properly drafted.
On another matter, Ahmad Razif said the state government would continue to send students to pursue medicine and dentistry in recognised universities in Indonesia.
“We are looking into the option of sending our students to universities in areas classified as non-earthquake prone areas in Indonesia,” he said. - Doctors, save yourselves! Peacekeepers, get out of those wretched countries!
Ahmad Razif said the state government was also in the midst of discussions with officials from University Padjadjaran of Bandung on the possibility of sending Terengganu students for medical courses there.
He said other countries that the state government was planning to send their medical undergraduates next year were Poland and Russia.Oh teacher, tell me this is nothing more than a practical joke.break
HOW FAR WE'VE COME
- Matchbox Twenty -
....came via e-mail today....
This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.
"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.
You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.
I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.
Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived".
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