The first message that she was dying came by bicycle. Sean Patrick rode up the steep trail on Smuggler Mountain, Aspen, Colorado, on a cool, pre-fall day in 1995. She had spent many summer afternoons biking through the Aspen groves, enjoying the late sun shining patchwork on the trail. Normally energized from the strenuous workout and her daily 15- to 22-mile rides, Patrick was shocked when she became so out of breath that she had to get off the bike to avoid throwing up.

It was radical, she says. I couldnt get up. At first she thought she had over trained or suffered from exhaustion from too much traveling. Confirming her ideas, Patricks doctor suggested that she slow down and get a hobby. If you cant slow down, he said to her, I can always give you a prescription for Valium.

after weeks of still not being able to ride or rock climbher favorite sportPatrick returned to her doctor, who did blood work, but found nothing obviously wrong. He told her not to worry. It wasnt until 1997 that she finally found out that she had a rare form of ovarian cancer called Micropapillary Serous Carcinoma. after the late discovery, Patrick endured seven surgeries and, at one point in 2001 after being flown to a hospital via flight for life, doctors told her she wouldnt live past six weeks.

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Patrick did live, and she says, in large part it was due to her experiences in the mountains. She was strong from regularly biking and lifting weights, and she was mentally balanced after decades of rock climbing. The wilderness and leadership skills she gleaned in places like the Rocky Mountains prepared her for the greatest challenge of her lifesurviving that six-week ordeal in the hospital.

While on her deathbed in the ICU, a doctor inserted a blood gas line in her body, and it hurt like hell, she says. I snapped and got angry, and at that moment I came back into my body. She likens the feeling to being really scared after a rock climbing fall or when she has been stuck on the side of a mountain on a ledge in a thunderstorm. I would get scared and then angry, and that would act as a catalyst to get moving. I knew if I did not keep moving in the face of my disease that I would not make it.

Since her extraordinary recovery six years ago, Patrick continues to move rapidly forward. Not only does she still climb and play in the mountainsshe topped out on the Grand Teton after 22 hours of climbing through blizzard conditions in 2004but she also decided to make it her mission to raise awareness and money for the cancer that almost killed her. My lifes goal is to prevent as many women as possible from going through what I experienced, she says.

In the last few years Patrick has helped create an ovarian cancer website for the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, and she regularly travels around the country on speaking engagements. Patricks crowning achievement is the non-profit HERA Foundation (Health, Empowerment, research, Advocacy), which she created in 2002. She organizes Climb For Life events around the country and in Mexico, which bring women and men together to rock climb, do yoga, watch climbing slide shows and films, and, most importantly, learn about and raise money for ovarian cancer.

Friend and Climb for Life volunteer, Deanne Pranke says that Patricks climbing events have been incredibly inspirational for thousands of people. Sean has brought ovarian cancer out in the open and empowered many women such as myself to take charge of our health and educate our loved ones and friends about this kind of cancer.

Adds Patrick, The need for perseverance forces women to reach deep inside themselves when they feel like they cant go further. The lessons you learn from climbing and taking care of yourself in the wilderness translate into successful life strategies on a day to day basis. In fact, Patrick has never seen a sport as empowering as climbing is for women. Often when Ive seen women get to the top of a route in the gym, the transformation on their face is phenomenal, she explains.

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Sean Patricks wide smile greets the climbers as they stream into the third-floor room of REI denver, spring 2004. Running her hand through a shock of white blonde hair, she says shes nervous when speaking publicly, but her voice is steady and vibrant as she talks about ovarian cancer and the HERA Climb for Life REI Road Tour (now in its third year), sponsored by REI, black Diamond, and HERA. She speaks to the audience with the fluency of someone who possesses a vast knowledge of the disease and the politics surrounding it.

after her diagnosis, Patrick became a research maven, reading everything she could find on the subject and hounding doctors all over the country. With her energetic and insistent attitude, shes penetrated the wall of scientific jargon to understand her disease. What she learned inspired her to reach out to others.

Since its inception, she says, the foundation has provided doctors with research grants; provided seed grants to a number of small communities, which have allowed them to offer immediate assistance to aid patients with travel, hotel rooms, and childcare while they are undergoing treatment; and established awareness programs throughout the united States.

Patrick has also convinced thousands of women and men to work with her. Among those women are famous alpinist kitty Calhoun and Salt Lake City, utah, resident Hillary Silberman. Both women worked with Patrick to create a video highlighting the HERA Foundation and ovarian cancer.

According to Silberman, making the video and volunteering for HERA changed her life. Silbermans mother died in 2003 from ovarian cancer, and she says that she felt helpless in the face of her mothers illness. My involvement with HERA gave me the tools to work with to deal with my mothers death as well as people to connect with who understand where Im coming from.

By being involved and being proactive, Silberman explains, she has done something positive for others by presenting them with information. I have also done something positive for myself by beginning to think about what I needed to do to protect myself and get early detection.

With cancer affecting most of the female members of her family, Silberman is at a high risk for contracting the disease, although she doesnt currently have it. Her nurse practitioner tried to convince her not to worry, but Patrick and the Climb for Life events convinced Silberman to follow through on her own to seek the medical services she needs for early detection. The feeling of strength, perseverance and tenaciousness that climbing engenders made me not give up when professionals were telling me not to worry.

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As with most female-specific diseases, says Patrick, ovarian cancer has typically been ignored by the medical industry. Despite the fact that it kills women of all ages and more women than all the other gynecological cancers combined, many doctors are ignorant of its symptoms and think the disease affects only the elderly. This, explains Patrick, partially results from the medical fields traditional focus on men and male-specific diseases.

For example, the Agency for Healthcare research and Quality found that although coronary heart disease (CHD) causes more than 250,000 deaths in women each year, much of the research in the last 20 years on CHD has either excluded women entirely or included only limited numbers of women.

Additionally, doctors treat women different than men in hospitals. According to a fall 2001 study published in the journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, womens pain reports are taken less seriously than mens, and women receive less aggressive treatment than men for their pain. Also, women were more likely to have their pain reports discounted as emotional and therefore, not real.

I have had several experiences with this kind of dismissive treatment by both male and female doctors, says Patrick. It is a flaw in how medicine is taughtwomen complain, men dont, so they take mens complaints more seriously. To get the best treatment, you have to find a doctormale or female (one is not better than another in being more empathetic)that sees you as a person and not a statistical group.

Although Patrick seeks to change the way doctors view ovarian cancer and other women-specific diseases, she believes its more imperative to encourage women to take control of their own health. Ovarian cancer is not a silent killer, she says, the disease has symptoms, and its important that women are made aware of what they are. Women who go to the doctor with gastrointestinal symptoms must make sure that ovarian cancer is ruled out.

Through climbing, Patrick believes that women can be taught to stand up for themselves. Not only do these events teach women self-reliance, but they are also places where we can turn our passion for climbing into a passion for making a difference.

I think success in climbing no matter what level you climb at5.4 to 5.14translates to successful life strategies, Patrick says. I want women who are empowered by the mountains to take this back into everyday life, and as it relates to the medical community, I want them to trust their intuition despite their doctors contention that they may not have a problem. In climbing and in life, trust yourself.

For more information on ovarian cancer and the HERA Foundation, please visit the HERA Foundation website at www.theherafoundation.org. Climb For Life events are held regularly around the country. The next 2007 event will be held in boulder, Colorado. registration has started.

Lizzy Scully Writer lizzy@girlsed.org

To find out more about registering or volunteering for the june 15-17, 2007 event, please visit: http://www.climb4lifeco.kintera.org/.

¶ 5:44 PM 0 comments

most of the time we barely think about what the true consequences of a bad decision can be, and on those occasions when we do think about the consequences, we usually end up lying to ourselves. We find some way to justify what were doing and make it seem not as bad as it really is. I use to think like this until I experienced the consequences of a truly bad decision. let me explain; I heard that some people were going to be drinking at the school football game and thought itd be fun to be wasted at the game. I drove to the school around the time we agreed to meet up to start drinking. We all sat in my parents car in the school parking lot drinking out of the bottle getting drunk. I didnt think about how I was going to get home, I couldnt drive home being as intoxicated as I was, but I figured Id worry about getting home later.

We walked into the football game and I dont remember much after that. about 20 minutes into the game I blacked out and when I became conscious again I was in a hospital bed with my mom at the side. I didnt remember how I got to the hospital or anything. The next morning I was faced with many questions, most of them having to do with why I drank, how I was going to get home, what could I of been thinking making a decision like that? I really didnt have answers for these questions, because theyre all pretty much based on why I didnt make a better decision. I didnt think about what would happen if I got caught, how it would affect my life, what consequences there would be.

There were many consequences I had to face from my bad decision, but the worst ones to me were losing the trust of my parents, getting my license taken away, I have to pay an over two thousand dollar hospital bill, and my grades in school dramatically slipped. I now find myself thinking on a more than weekly basis why didnt I think the decision through? How could I have made such a bad decision?

The next time youre going to make a bad decision thatll have negative consequences, take a minute to actually think about what the possible consequences will be if you get caught or something goes wrong, and how they will affect your life. Then make your decision.

¶ 10:35 AM 0 comments

In todays techno savvy world, there has been a rise in the health related problems. As a result of sedentary lifestyle, diseases like obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular have been continuously on rise. There are numerous studies and researches undertaken everyday to find out the balanced diet equation. Studies over the years have proved that food should be cooked in fish oil and cod liver oil. This is because of their numerous benefits. The fish oil helps in treatment of depression, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, cancer, peptic ulcers and type II diabetes.

The oil is not easily absorbed by many people in its natural state. It is because of its awful taste, people hate it. Therefore, people prefer taking it in the form of capsules. The oil contains vitamin D and A in abundant quantity. However, if fish oil is consumed in large amount, it can harm your health. Some of the harmful effects that can be caused are breathing problems, chest pain, diarrhea, skin irritation and high levels of blood sugar. Thus, if you suffer from any of these symptoms, stop your fish oil intake and consult a doctor.

Also, breastfeeding mothers, people with high blood pressure, diabetes and pregnant women must refer to their family doctor before taking fish oil capsules. There are side effects of these capsules that come with the overdose of EPA, DHA and omega 3 fatty acids. Studies have revealed that omega 3 is most beneficial when taken with molecularly distilled fish oil as all the contaminations like heavy material and mercury are removed by this process.

Rich sources of fish oil are albacore tuna, salmon, herring, black cod, cod liver, sardines, mackerel, anchovies and black cod. The source of cod liver oil is cod liver. Traditionally, it was given as a dietary supplement to children. It consists of vitamin D and A as well as omega-3 fatty acids. The benefit of consuming cod liver oil is that it is used to nourish hair, nails and skin. Also, the oil is taken to reduce stiffness and pain in joints which is caused due to arthritis. It has advantageous effects on bone, heart and brain.

Aroma and flavor of cod liver oil depends on the superiority of oil. The flavor can range from intolerable and intense smell to light sardine-like essence. Superior quality oil is oily, thin, pale yellow and has a mild taste of fish. Eating mint or citrus essence with cod liver oil makes the meal more delicious.

The amount of fish you consume is determined by your health and dietary status. Around 20 to 30 milliliters of cod liver oil is used while preparing food. However, studies have shown that the benefits of fish oil have been decreasing. Irrespective of any of the oil you consume, both cod liver oil and fish oil have their own advantages and disadvantages. Hence, according to ones needs and requirements one can choose any option to go with.

George Christodoulou

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Speak Out! Leave a comment, start a discussion, and ask a question that can be answered by experts in the industry.

¶ 3:51 AM 0 comments