Hope on the Slopes (American Cancer Society ski fundraising) is gearing up, and
Lynn is participating. I donated, of course, but I need to start doing do some events like that myself.
I haven't lost anyone really close to me to cancer (Alzheimer's/dementia and
Metabolic Syndrome have been my least favorite diseases, along with
Lymphangiomyomatosis). But good people I have known less well have had it, and Lynn's family has all kinds of cancers, including ones with strong heritable factors... That alone is enough to move cancer from my general shit list to my personal shit list.
Aside from the obvious effect of dealing with these kinds of diseases on a personal level, merely getting older has shifted my awareness, and even more, my desire to do something about them. At one time I wouldn't have fully understood Lynn's desire to go into bioinformatics. Nowadays I do.
Is that just the standard growing up thing? Part of it is, certainly. But is part of it feeling older and more in danger myself? At the conscious level, I don't think so... I have always felt myself fairly safe from much of that. Dementia should be a long ways off at least, the relatively few cancers in my family are fairly minor and treatable (well, one lung cancer, but dad's mom was a big smoker). My current path of health should serve pretty well against metabolic syndrome. There is always chance, but what are you going to do?
Bah,all this kind of thinking, I must have a certain birthday coming up. Though, as a geek, shouldn't I wait until the rollover to 6 bits?
P.S. actually not feeling depressed or down. Just thoughtful, with a bit cheerfulness actually, as I think soon we will be kicking a lot of these diseases to the curb.
