Our Bodies Ourselves

This just in to our Beck’s Cafe mailbox, (and no I didn’t spill coffee on it this time):

Want to be part of a resource guide for transgender and other gender-variant people?

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves features a line-up of wonderful transgender and genderqueer authors, and they’re looking for your help to make the book amazing.

Take the survey and your thoughts could appear in the book!

Go to http://www.transbodies.com/Survey.html for surveys designed for:
-Transgender/genderqueer people
-Parents of gender-variant children
-Partners of transgender/genderqueer people

Please forward widely.

YOUR VOICE is greatly appreciated!

Laura Erickson-Schroth, MD, MA
Editor, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves
transbodies@gmail.com
www.transbodies.com

Jenny Boylan and Jamison Greene are on the project so it should be worth all our time to give them a little piece of our mind.

Well, we are at the end of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but we shouldn’t stop being unaware of this disease now that the month is over.  Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women.  Some women do not either self-exam or get examined by a medical specialist.  Sometimes women are too busy keeping their families together; sometimes they just don’t know enough to do their own breast exam properly; sometimes they just can’t afford it.  For women who are lesbian or are transexual, add in a fear (either real or perceived) of being discriminated against and the barriers seem almost insurmountable.  But there’s a resource our Boston area readers may not be aware of at Fenway Health.

Fenway Health is the one of the leading community health centers in the United States that includes LGBTIQ people as well.  In their words:

The mission of Fenway Health is to enhance the physical and mental health of its community, which includes those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, the people who live and work in our neighborhood, and beyond.

Fenway has a comprehensive set of services for breast cancer screening and, if you can’t afford to pay for such services, please let them know!  If you are a trans-woman, don’t let your lack of job or insurance be a barrier, contact the Fenway Transhealth Navigator program to help you.

We noted on October 21st that an early detection plan for breast cancer is a wise option and greatly improves your chances of survival.  Well, one key task in that plan is a self exam.  And we have a treat for ya

Way back in February, 2006 Beck’s Cafe ran an article entitled, “Breast Cancer Self-Exams Just Got Easier“.  In that article we noted some of the latest developments in breast cancer exams to make the whole proecess nicer, easier and less painful.  We’ve re-perked it up for this 2009 Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  The dead links have been pulled and the existing ones on that post updated, so all that material is ready to go, like your morning coffee    Click here to get to our article “Breast Cancer Self-Exams Just Got Easier”

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month as you know.  Early detection of breast cancer is all of our best defense against this menace.  And this is true for genetic women, trans-women, trans-men who have not had top surgery and genetic men!    While this whole concept may sound daunting (“who has time for this!  What is Becki thinking!”) there’s a handy and free tool on the web to help you.

The National Breast Cancer Foundation Early Detection Plan Tool (or NBCFEDPT) can walk you through the process on-line to get your very own plan.  Here’s some reasons why all of us should do this:

• Nearly 200,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year.
• 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime.
• Over 30% of women are diagnosed after breast cancer has spread beyond the localized stage.
• When breast cancer is detected early (localized stage), the 5-year survival rate is 98%.

So take that cup o’ java (the coffee not that pile o’ code on  your server begging for your love) and go give it a try  
The National Breast Cancer Foundation Early Detection Plan Tool

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and we’ll be featuring this important theme at Beck’s Cafe throughout the balance of October.  It’s an important topic from the politics of research to our personal health.  I’ll never forget the words of Dr. Susan Love at the 2009 Fenway Health Women’s Dinner.  She said that researchers she had worked with hadn’t found women for some of their research on breast cancer so they figured they’d just use rats instead.  Rats???  Well I nearly dropped my chocolate dessert (ahh, but the night wasn’t over).

That’s when Dr. Love presented to all us 1000+ women the concept of recruiting 1 million women to be a part of her Army of Women so that proper research could be done with women themselves on breast cancer.  Sounds like a pretty good plan to me.   Here are Dr. Love’s words herself on this incredible initiative (taken from The Army of Women site):

“Over and over I’ve heard scientists lament how difficult it is for them to find the volunteers they need for research studies. I’ve long believed that helping scientists overcome this obstacle would accelerate our understanding of what causes breast cancer and how to end it. By responding to this need, the Army of Women will change the face of breast cancer research.”

And here’s how this initiative works (by the way, about this point in the Fenway Dinner, while listening to Dr. Love challenge us all to join her Army of Women, I actually did drop my chocolate dessert right onto the floor next to my shoe. Only fate saved me from destroying my dress or that of my companion Diane!).

• Women who are interested register on the Love/Avon Army of Women website, providing very basic information such as name, age, city, and state of residence.
• You will receive email updates from the Love/Avon Army of Women announcing new research studies looking for volunteers just like you. The email will detail the research project and who and what the researchers need.
• If you fit the criteria and you’d like to participate, all you need to do is click “Yes Sign Me Up”, this lets us know you’ve accepted our “Call to Action”.  From there, you will be asked to log-in to your account and then directed to the next steps.
• If you accept the Call to Action by clicking “Yes, Sign Me Up”, you will be asked a couple of screening questions to make sure you qualify for the study.
• Once we confirm your qualification for the specific study, your information will be given to the researcher conducting the study and you will be contacted by the researcher for a secondary screening to make sure you meet the study criteria and answer any questions you might have about study participation.
• You will never be pressured to take part in any study. The decision to take part is yours — and yours alone. If you meet the study criteria as determined by the researcher and are interested in taking part, the study researcher will let you know what you need to do next.

You can still sign up and be a part of the army!  Just jog your mouse on over to The Army Of Women and enlist!  And many thanks to the Avon Foundation For Women for funding.

The Boston Marathon has finished for another year.  It’s a wonderful event with world class runners, drama, and of course Heart Breake Hill where the race is often made or lost.   While I was doing some web surfing trying to figure out some of the stories of the people in the middle of the pack I cam across Joy Johnson.  Wait till you see her.

Joy is the defending 80-and-over champion in the New York City Marathon.  You read that right, 80 and over.  She’s so good and so fit she increased the intensity of her training when she thought she might be slipping.  I had no idea the 80 and over bracket was so competitive!   You can read her inspiring story and see her training even at the Wall Street Journal at this link here

I think Joy’s story draws me in since she so inspires me as does Elaine Mansfield’s story of her transformation through strength training at age 55.   Both women show it’s never too late.  It’s never too late to take control back of your own personal health if you want to.   That is quite and inspiration for me and, if you read their stories, for you too I hope.

Now to get the coffee ready for tomorrow morning

I know fair number of transgender women and one thing I can almost universally say about 95% of them is they…

do not sleep … hardly at all

It’s truly baffling to all of us. But now I might have some ideas on what’s making us become such zombies…damn good lookin’ ones but zombies none-the-less (thank GOD for under eye makeup cover).

In an article titled, “Why We Can’t Sleep?“, Gayle Greene, Professor of Literature and Women’s Studies at Scripps College, teases out some interesting points in her Ms. Magazine article:

• A 2007 poll by the National Sleep Foundation found that 67 percent of women frequently experience sleep problems

• 29 percent of women use some type of sleep aid at least a few nights a week

• 75 percent of sleep research has been done on men, and until recently the researchers have been primarily men. The major texts for sleep studies have had, until recently, little to say about women’s sleep

• There’s a tendency to assume that the problem is psychological. When 501 physicians were interviewed about how they treated insomnia, they revealed that they asked an average of just two and a half questions, mostly about psychological problems. And since doctors believe it’s all in the head, there’s little impetus to research insomnia. In 2005, the National Institutes of Health spent less than $20 million on the condition, although it affects as many as a third of the U.S. adult population. Most of those funds were directed toward treating and managing the problem, while less than $4 million went to investigations of neurophysiological and neuroendocrinal mechanisms — the kind of basic research that might lead to an understanding of cause. (barista note: this whole approach kinda reminds me of how those of us who have GID are treated…we have to be crazy in the head not really being driven by some internal intersex issue none of us can identify but many of us know in our hearts).

The article is very eye opening about how the medical community may be hiding it’s head under the pillow on a cause and help on a real issue in this country. It’s enough to make you stay up late to read! You can read the full article at Ms. Magazine at their link here.

(Photo courtesy of LunaDiRimmel, used under Creative Commons license)