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DeniseC · July 26, 2008, 4:56pm

NEW YORK mayor Michael Bloomberg and Microsoft founder Bill Gates said they will together provide $500 million to fight tobacco use around the world, especially in developing countries where smoking rates are rising.

Mr Bloomberg has already given $125 million to the cause and will provide $250 million more. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said it will spend $125 million over five years, including a $24 million grant to the Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, which Mr Bloomberg created in 2005.

“We said, ‘Let’s design our work to be complementary’,” Mr Gates told the audience at an event on Wednesday that included interviews with both men by PBS television journalist Charlie Rose.

Mr Bloomberg has made limiting public smoking and easy access to smoking-cessation services high priorities since becoming New York’s mayor.

He said that during his administration, the city’s rate of smoking has fallen 22 per cent, and smoking by teenagers more than 50 per cent.

In 2005 his foundation helped pay for a survey of smoking prevalence, as well as tobacco control measures and smoking-cessation programmes in 179 countries.

The report was published in February as part of a global anti-smoking campaign called MPOWER. The letters stand for: Monitoring tobacco use; Protecting people by enforcing smoke-free laws; Offering smokers treatment; Warning of tobacco’s hazards; Enforcing advertising bans; and Raising taxes on tobacco.

India and China are places where tobacco control is especially needed, the philanthropists said.

Mr Gates said that in China, 67 per cent of men and more than half of doctors smoke.

He said he hopes anti-smoking efforts will prevent Africa - where about 20 per cent of men smoke - from suffering the high rates that European and American countries once did and many Asian countries now do.

[Gates</a> and NY mayor in $500m smoking campaign - The Irish Times - Fri, Jul 25, 2008](<a href=“http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/0725/1216917539258.html]Gates”>http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/0725/1216917539258.html)

ADad · July 26, 2008, 5:17pm

–Shakespeare

epistrophy · July 26, 2008, 6:19pm

more on lung cancer “survivor” Vaclav Havel (#3049)

“Back to Art, Havel Meditates on Power”

VACLAV HAVELS new absurdist tragicomedy, Leaving his first play in about 20 years depicts a womanizing former political leader who grudgingly confronts the political wilderness.

Much has been made of the parallels between the plot and Mr. Havels life. The main character, Vilem Rieger, the chancellor of an unnamed country, leaves office and is being pushed from his extravagant government villa by a pompous former deputy, Vlastik Klein. He just happens to share the initials of Vaclav Klaus, Mr. Havels archrival, who succeeded him as president of the Czech Republic.

Mr. Havel, who stepped down as president five years ago, acknowledged that the play which will have its foreign premiere in London in September before going to the United States is a semiautobiographical King Lear-like meditation on the seductiveness of power. But he insisted he was happy to have exited the stage at least the political one and to have escaped a tumultuous life that, he contended, had accidentally thrust him into the spotlight.

I understand, especially when one is looking at me from a distance, that I might seem as some kind of fairy-tale hero who banged his head against the wall until the wall fell, and then reigned, he said on a recent day, looking more like an aging hippie than an elder statesman in his signature blue jeans, and appearing withdrawn, frail and a little exasperated. The once ever-present pack of cigarettes was conspicuously absent. (Mr. Havel gave up smoking after battling lung cancer.)

It makes me blush slightly because I know my mistakes, he continued. On the other hand, I do not ridicule it because people need these kinds of stories.

Now 71, with sparkling but sunken eyes and a mere whisper of a voice, Mr. Havel was emphatic that he was ready to disappear after what many critics hoped would not be his last artistic statement. One of the cold wars most celebrated dissidents could be forgiven for craving invisibility.

He has led a revolution that overturned four decades of Communism in his native Czechoslovakia, languished five years in prison, written 19 plays, survived nearly drowning, and served 13 years as president all while remaining one of his generations most nonconformist writers.

I have had a very adventurous life, but not because I have an adventurous nature or yearned for a life full of adventure, he said. Fate just wanted it this way.

Yet while the West has lionized him, in his native Czech Republic, 19 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he remains a source of ambivalence, if not sometimes downright resentment.

Havel gets attention in the West by saying banal, kitschy things, said Bohumil Dolezal, a leading right-wing commentator, who once worked for Mr. Klaus. One who tries to be responsible for everything isnt responsible for anything.

Why such contempt for a figure some have compared with Gandhi?

Some have contended that for someone who claimed to be a reluctant president, Mr. Havel held on to power too long.

Others, like Erik Tabery, a Czech journalist who is writing a book about the Czech presidency, said some Czechs resented Mr. Havel because he held up an uncomfortable mirror to their own history of chronic passivity. While the Communists ruled for 40 years, most Czechs stayed at home and did nothing, he said. Havel did something.

Mr. Havel has his own theory. If you look at somebody for a long time and you encounter him over such a long time, on television in the evening, it will eventually begin to annoy you slightly, he said. The person will begin to bore you, especially if he keeps repeating minority views.

In any case, he stressed, he has no desire to be worshiped or, worse, slavishly obeyed.

In Leaving, Mr. Havels voice bellows from offstage, telling the actors how to behave, warning them not to overact, even giving orders on what they should drink cinnamon with beer.

Rather than reflecting a control-freak who wants to stage-manage life and art, Mr. Havel said, the voice was meant to mock his own authority. When, for example, I said that I did not like a certain dog, there was always some overambitious person ready to shoot that dog, he said. And that bothered me.

BORN into a wealthy bourgeois family in 1936, Mr. Havel first rose to prominence as a chain-smoking rebel intellectual in the 1960s. In 1968, when the Red Army invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress a democratic blossoming known as the Prague Spring, Mr. Havel denounced the invasion, and his plays were censored.

Looking back at the Prague Spring as its 40th anniversary was about to be observed in August, Mr. Havel said the event laid bare Communisms incompatibility with freedom and rid the Western left of their illusions.

In 1977, he led a group of Czechoslovak intellectuals who wrote and signed Charter 77, a document that called for the government to respect human rights. Refusing to back down, he was labeled an enemy of the state and imprisoned.

Mr. Havel is credited with overseeing the smooth transition from Communism to liberal capitalism after leading a 10-day Velvet Revolution in 1989, so velvety that not a single bullet was fired. Once elected the president of a newly democratized Czechoslovakia a role he says was more duty than aspiration he linked the country firmly to the West. He cleared the way for the Czech Republic to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the European Union five years later.

His star status drew world leaders and dignitaries to Prague, from the Dalai Lama, with whom Mr. Havel meditated for hours, to Bill Clinton, who serenaded him on his saxophone. Calling on the former dissident became a politically redemptive act.

Yet his presidency, which ended in 2003, was marked by a jovial eccentricity that repelled as well as endeared. He invited the Rolling Stones to the imposing Prague Castle, the office of the president; allowed a large neon-red heart to be erected on a side of the castle; hired women as bodyguards; and drove along the castles endless corridors in a red pedal scooter. Critics called him a reluctant leader who learned to like power too much.

One of his first big political setbacks occurred shortly after he took office, when he stubbornly resigned in 1992 to protest the breakup of Czechoslovakia. The countrys dismemberment into two separate states, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, happened anyway, presaging secessionist movements in other parts of Europe. (Mr. Havel was elected president of the Czech Republic in January 1993.)

He also alienated many Czechs by refusing to ban the Communist Party or take to task the system that had allowed neighbors to inform on one another. Some lauded him for avoiding witch hunts, but others demanded justice.

Many Czechs were disappointed in 1997 when he married Dagmar Veskrnova, an actress almost 20 years his junior known for her role as a topless vampire, less than a year after the death of his widely revered wife, Olga.

MR. HAVEL never joined a political party, preferring to embrace a kind of civic politics in which he could remain citizen Havel. But even his admirers say his attempt to try to remain aloof from the tribal battles of political life was naïve. If he has any failing, it is that he was too well brought up to confront the political arrogance of others and cant cope if he has to tell someone bad news, said Lubos Dobrovsky, one of his oldest friends, who ran his office when he was president.

It is perhaps a sign of Mr. Havels mixed legacy that his successor is Vaclav Klaus, a right-wing maverick who has fashioned himself as the anti-Havel by railing against issues Mr. Havel championed, like the European Union and the fight against climate change. In the play, Vlastik Klein, Mr. Klauss doppelgänger, orders a cherry orchard to be cut down and replaced with a casino, shopping mall and brothel a barely veiled attack on Mr. Klauss brand of unbridled capitalism, which Mr. Havel resists.

And what, if anything, disappoints Mr. Havel about the state of contemporary capitalist culture, whose forces he helped unleash as a dissident? I do not like the ads on the shirts of hockey or football players, he said. Youd think Coca-Cola is playing against Pepsi-Cola.

<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/world/europe/26havel.html?ref=arts[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/world/europe/26havel.html?ref=arts</a>

churchmusicmom · July 26, 2008, 7:47pm

Yes, operamom, thank you.

symphonymom · July 26, 2008, 9:09pm

LTS…I was told about your situation by a CC friend. One of my best friends was diagnosed with Stage 4 small cell lung cancer three years ago (almost to the day). She had no risk factors and had been in great health (she’s 48 years old). We got her into the best lung cancer specialist possible at the university near us. She is still on her FIRST LINE drug after three years (and they have many more in their arsenal!!!) She is doing great. The first year was the hardest…but her tumors are not growing at a perceptible rate and she has her old energy back (in fact, she’s off traveling for the rest of the summer). She has a tremendous fighting spirit. I wanted you to know about her. Anything is possible.

epistrophy · July 26, 2008, 11:22pm

standing up to the tobacco industry - at 19

“N.C. native nominated for Teen Choice Award”

A North Carolina native is one of eight finalists for the Do Something Award at the annual Teen Choice Awards.

The Do Something Award is for a young person who is making a difference in the world and their own communities.

After losing family members to lung cancer, Chad Bullock, 19, of Durham, became an anti-tobacco activist and consultant for youth advocacy and tobacco prevention. Bullock has trained 15,000 teens nationwide in developing an action plan and led activists to make the Durham Bulls Athletic Park smoke-free, according to his bio on the Do Something. He also successfully petitioned the state Attorney General to take action against cigarette advertising campaigns targeting children.

Something has to be done and standing up to the tobacco industry is what I am doing, Bullock said in a statement Saturday.

The eight finalists have already won $10,000 each from DoSomething.org. The winner of the Do Something Award will take home $100,000.

The winner will be decided by online votes. Voting ends Aug. 1.

[N.C</a>. native nominated for Teen Choice Award :: WRAL.com](<a href=“http://www.wral.com/news/local/noteworthy/story/3285147/]N.C”>http://www.wral.com/news/local/noteworthy/story/3285147/)

NYMomof2 · July 27, 2008, 12:25am

Operamom, I am so sorry that you lost your son in such an especially heartbreaking way.

epistrophy · July 27, 2008, 7:07am

living with lung cancer

“Things learned after a diagnosis of lung cancer”

When a loved one is diagnosed with lung cancer, you suddenly see smokers everywhere. They are husbands and fathers, sisters and mothers. They are tweens and college students who don’t knowand probably don’t carethat cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, many of them carcinogens.

When someone you love is told he has less than a year to live, you wonder how accurate these life expectancy predictions are, anyway. You think, “But it was just low back pain,” and wish that months ago he had gone to a physician, rather than self-medicating with Advil and making four trips to a chiropractor.

But like more than 50 million Americans, he didn’t have a primary care doctor. The chiropractor was more affordable, accessible and didn’t require a doctor’s referral. The chiropractor, however, didn’t suspect that the low back pain was Stage IV lung cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes and brain.

When someone you care about suddenly needs extensive health care, the first call you make is not to a doctor for a second opinion or a treatment plan, but to a friend who works for the insurance industry. Your friend tells you to ask his insurance providerrather than the doctorwhat has been approved as the “best practices” to treat his type of cancer. She also recommends finding a licensed social worker through the American Cancer Society’s free Cancer Patient Navigator service.

You realize you have to ask for, and question, everything. “Often, experimental trials are covered, but the treatment gets miscoded and things that should be approved are denied,” your insurance industry friend says.

But you learn the cancer is so advanced that he doesn’t qualify for clinical trials. You suspect this means he needs “palliative” or “hospice” care, but you’re not sure what the terms mean, so you call Martha Twaddle, the chief medical officer at the Midwest Palliative Care and Hospice Center in Glenview.

Twaddle patiently explains that while palliative care includes hospice, or end-of-life care for the severely ill, it’s not solely for the dying. It is a “safety net” of services designed to address the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of people of all ages.

To get it, Twaddle says, you simply tell your doctor you’d like palliative care. Then there’s a meeting with a palliative care team to develop a broad treatment plan for the entire family that could include everything from home care and grief counseling to physical therapy and nutrition classes.

“If you really tailor the care to the person, not just the disease, it makes sense that you see better outcomes,” Twaddle says.

Still, when a loved one has lung cancer, you know how it ends. He will be lucky if he sees his 11-year-old daughter’s next birthday. Now, you just want to alleviate his suffering and to warn others. Eighty-seven percent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking; at least 87 percent of the cases are preventable.

But when you approach a Northwestern student who is smoking outside Starbucks and tell her this, and explain how tobacco companies use menthol to create a deadly addiction in children, she says nothing. She takes another puff and walks away.

[Things</a> learned after a diagnosis of lung cancer – chicagotribune.com](<a href=“http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0727-deardorffjul27,0,576357.story]Things”>http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0727-deardorffjul27,0,576357.story)

epistrophy · July 27, 2008, 7:16am

looking forward, with Issa (1763-1827), to fall

epistrophy · July 27, 2008, 7:33am

and another

[url=<a href=“http://rushstories.org/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=CN7s3Mn635QCFRILIgod_Bo3SQ]Rush”>http://rushstories.org/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=CN7s3Mn635QCFRILIgod_Bo3SQ]Rush</a> Stories<a href=“Judy’s%20story”>/url</a>

DeniseC · July 27, 2008, 6:10pm

Thinking of you, LTS. Hoping that you are getting some yummy calories!

latetoschool · July 27, 2008, 7:32pm

Thank you, Denise; today/tonight I will remember and pray for Randy Pausch and his family. I am gratified to see Google’s notice under their search field.

ADad · July 27, 2008, 11:27pm

–Hank Aaron

epistrophy · July 28, 2008, 8:59am

and another

“A Survivor’s Purpose”

I recognized her instantly. The pale, delicate complexion. The carefully wrapped headscarf. The vibrant, magenta hat the completed her outfit. She was easily identifiable. A chemo patient.

I was browsing through the bookstore when I spotted her making a purchase. Something about her demeanor tugged at me to go over and say something encouraging, like, “I’ve been there. You’ll get through it.”

But I didn’t. What if I offended her by being presumptuous? What if she possessed a reserved, guarded personality that didn’t freely bear her soul to others? Who was I, a stranger, to approach her and delve into her personal life? Instead, I stood silently in the background, while eavesdropping at the same time.

“How are you today?” asked the saleswoman, as she rung up the purchase and placed it in a bag.

The lady with the magenta hat shook her head forcefully. “Not well,” she replied, suppressing a sob. She quickly paid for her item, grabbed her package and bolted from the store. People near the counter looked at each other silently as the door slammed. Their expressions conveyed heartfelt anguish.

I stood there ashamed. Here was an obvious cancer patient, experiencing a bad day–just like the ones that had engulfed me–and I did nothing to help. I resolved then and there, despite any awkwardness on my part, I would reach out to others like her in the future. As a survivor, it was my duty.

How many times during my own battle with cancer did I feel exasperated and discouraged, scared and angry? Days when I was embarrassed to be seen in public. Days when I was fed up with all the shots and the perpetually foul taste in my mouth. Days when treatment seemed like a never-ending process. Days when I wondered if I was going to live.

Despite their compassionate intentions, friends couldn’t fully relate. People were either horrified if I made a joke about my condition, or they put me on a pedestal for enduring it all. But, I wasn’t a hero; I was a mere mortal with authentic feelings.

My savior came in the form of a woman I knew who was a lung cancer survivor. Since Dee had previously walked in my steps, she knew the treacherous terrain by heart. On our long walks together, we discussed our fears and frustrations associated with cancer. She validated the imperfect thoughts I shared.

Although an impressive support network exists for cancer patients, it was an up-close, personal connection that helped me through the particularly rough spots.

This is true for all the curve balls life throws us. We need those who have already lived through our painful experience. No one else can fully comprehend the questions, fears and anger like another sufferer…whatever the particular situation. It takes one to know one.

My lowest point emotionally during treatment coincided with a dinner invitation from Dee and her husband. That day, I looked and felt horrible, and wanted to cancel. Nothing my precious husband could say convinced me to change my mind. At the last second, though, I decided to go since I would be spending time, after all, with Dee.

She answered the door looking splendid–chic haircut, stylish outfit, enviable figure–compared to me in all my frumpiness and baldness and bloating. As soon as we sat down in her living room, Dee asked matter-of-factly how I was.

“Fine,” I replied, masking my misery.

Gary–who never speaks for me–intervened. He told Dee the truth, that I was having a really tough day. I was so grateful for him speaking the words I couldn’t voice.

Without a word, Dee got up and left the room. We sat there in silence. A few moments, she returned with a photo album. She squeezed in between Gary and me on the sofa and flipped the album to the first page.

There she was in living color – bald, pallid skin, grimacing at the camera. Photo after photo documented her experience with cancer. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. By giving me an intimate glimpse of her struggle, I felt understood and restored.

Now, I realize it’s my turn to stand in the gap for others in need.

So when I’m approached to provide information or encouragement for someone who has been diagnosed, I realize that hanging out along the sidelines in silence is no longer an option.

[BRCA</a> Is My 4 Letter Word: A Survivor’s Purpose](<a href=“http://brcaismy4letterword.blogspot.com/2008/07/survivors-purpose.html]BRCA”>BRCA Is My 4 Letter Word: A Survivor's Purpose)

Threekids · July 28, 2008, 10:03am

Epistrophy:

After reading that post I know what I have to do. I have a friend, not a close friend, whose daughter was treated for Hodgkins. I’m terrible about keeping in touch, and haven’t talked to her for awhile. I’ve heard there has been a setback. This while they are making plans for the daughter’s wedding in December. I’ve worked with patients in a cancer institute, and my husband is a pediatric oncologist who had cancer himself, so I’ve never had a problem relating to cancer patients, although not as a patient myself. I’ve put off this phone call because I am a champion procrastinator and I’ve let it go too long without talking to her. Thank you, I’ll call today.

Latetoschool, thinking of you, as always.

marite · July 28, 2008, 10:18am

LTS: I hope you are continuing to feel better every day. I’m hopeful that your posts are a sign of progress.

somemom · July 28, 2008, 5:23pm

Thinking of you today, LTS, bumping this back to page 1

latetoschool · July 28, 2008, 6:57pm

Thank you for your kind thoughts; I was taking a few moments of silence for Randy Pausch. When I was released from the hospital following diagnosis back in September, and I returned to the Parent’s Cafe, his Last Lecture was one of the first threads I saw. I lurked around here for a few days, unable to write even one post. I was in shock. I tried my hardest to listen to the lecture all the way through and could not do so. I still have not been able to do so. But then someone asked “where is LTS” and I responded and then Collegemom created this thread. If it had not been for the Last Lecture thread, I almost certainly would never have posted the information about my diagnosis, but, the very existence of THAT thread sort of made it o.k. for me to post what I did re my diagnosis. Does that make any sense?

Challenging day today; PET scan, blood work, then I worked eight hours, and tomorrow I will have surgery to install a port. And then more chemotherapy. But I will get through it.

Thank you to everyone for all of the support and kind thoughts, I sincerely appreciate it.

momof2inca · July 28, 2008, 6:59pm

All that, and you WORKED 8 hours! You are amazing! I will pray that tomorrow goes smoothly for you, LTS.

latetoschool · July 28, 2008, 7:02pm

Not in the way you imagine - I am answering email and taking calls from my living room, and now my bed. I have one client who is particularly fiesty…:)

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