Breast Cancer and Down Syndrome

This is definitely unlike any of the other postings that I've done on here.  It is my take on one article covering the study of the link between breast cancer and having a child with Down syndrome.  Some of my comments may make no sense as they are responding to questions that other moms have asked on facebook.

This is the article that I read.  I don't actually have a physical copy as I read a friend's copy.

Fetal Down syndrome and the risk of maternal breast cancer.

Bjørge T, Cnattingius S, Engeland A, Tretli S, Lie RT, Lukanova A.

Epidemiology. 2009 Jul;20(4):584-9.

This study is actually pretty amazing. It is a much more solid study than I expected.  First of all, the study does have a few weaknesses that they outline in the article, but as the study was meant to study the link between Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and breast cancer and not Ds and breast cancer, most of the weaknesses of the study really don't have much to do with the link between Ds and BC.  The other weaknesses are the difference in age and the possible difference in breast feeding and surprisingly the average age was only off by two years which I can't imagine would affect the amount of breast cancer by 25%.  As for the breast feeding there is really no telling but it is also unlikely have such a huge difference.  Studies show a protective effect, but only in regards to those that have one of the breast cancer genes BRCA1 (as opposed to BRCA2 and breast cancers without the genes) and even then the percentage wouldn't be this high in this large a group, unless these countries were the origin of that breast cancer gene mutation - possible for one of the mutations of the gene, but not all of them.  If it were the place of origin, the 25% increase would still be there, but only limited to mothers that have the gene and choose to not breastfeed in regards to this study and would still be high in other areas with other mutations.  It's unlikely this is the case, but a lot of gene mutations have small focal origin points like this.  BRCA1 has various mutations occur from various countries, so it is likely to be higher not lower in the US, where we have multiple mutations of the gene to choose from.  

There are some weaknesses that I see that they don't list.  One weakness that I identify, but that isn't in the study, are the women that had miscarried or had an abortion of a child with Ds and later got breast cancer, which would make the link stronger not weaker because the moms would have been included in the wrong side of the study.  Also are children that weren't identified as having Ds at birth, but that might have died from heart or intestinal (or other issues) before ever getting a diagnosis, which if were known to be included could also have made the link stronger.  There is no way that they could collect that data though.

I was also skeptical of their 95% confidence level because I couldn't imagine how they had gotten enough moms to get that statistical surety, but I didn't realize they had almost complete data from 2 whole countries.  

As for the age 50 thing, I have some bad news.  It looks to me that they were only looking for their statistical analysis at women that were under 50 when they found their first cancerous tumor, not that the only increase was for that age group.  If you look at the actual data they posted, The breast cancer numbers actually increased with the time from the birth of the child with Down syndrome and since the age of the mom's in the study (not the ones for the statistics) went well past 50, the cancer numbers still show up in the raw data.  

I find it interesting and frustrating that this study wasn't even about mothers of Ds, but actually it was just convenient to study us for their purposes because of the hCG connection.  It just shows how none of our questions are likely to be answered unless we happen to be convenient as a study point of something else (like the way our kids are used for cancer prevention studies).

I might have an epiphany when thinking about this as I drift to sleep tonight as I often have things come into focus then that didn't occur to me earlier.  If so, I'll post those thoughts in this post.

Making Play Dough

I volunteered to make playdough for the bear cub's preschool class the Friday before last.  The teacher finally emailed me the recipe they wanted me to use yesterday and the bear cub's first day is Monday.  I was a little upset about her sending it to me so close to school starting until I found out how incredibly easy and wonderful it is to make.  I didn't take pictures of the process and I sort of wish I did because it is pretty cool how the liquid turns into dough.

Anyway, here is the final product.  Each bag is over 5 cups of playdough.

And of course, you want the recipe, because I think it's so much fun to do.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of plain flour
• 2 tbsp. of cooking oil
• 1 tsp. cream of tartar
• 2 cups of water
• 1 cup of salt
• food coloring 

Directions:

• Add the food coloring to the water.
• Place all of the ingredients in a medium size or large pan.
• Cook slowly on medium to high heat and stir until the playdough thickens. 

I made a few changes.  I added the food coloring after the dough was finished and used Kosher salt since I didn't have enough regular salt for even one batch.  Since the water I used was hot and we were cooking it, I figured that chemically it didn't matter as it would dissolve.  It takes just a few minutes for the dough to thicken.  You'll want to take it out of the pan to cool as soon as it thickens or it will continue to cook and you may have a dryer dough.

For the color (this is mostly for my future reference), I used Wilton gel food coloring.

For Red: A lot of it.  Probably half a container of the Christmas Red to get a vibrancy I liked ~1/4 ounce

Orange: 3 ml Orange

Yellow: 1ml Golden Yellow

Green: 2 ml Kelly Green

Blue:  3 ml Royal Blue

Purple: 2 ml violet + 3 ml Burgundy

My mom asked me if how much cheaper it was to make it vs. buying the same amount of PlayDoh.  I figure it is at least 36 regular sized jars of PlayDoh which would cost about 36 dollars to buy.  Making it myself cost 12 cups of flour (~$5), 12 Tbsp of cooking oil (~$.50), 6 tsp of Cream of Tartar (~$2.00), 6 cups salt ($1), and the food coloring ($1.50 as I bought it at Michaels with a 50% off coupon and used very little other than the red) so $10, but really probably less as I overestimated on all these prices.  If I make it for the girls, as I surely will, I'll be making a batch, separating it into 6 pieces and coloring them individually.  

Two Restaurants

I'm not a food blogger and really my tastes don't necessarily line up with other peoples.  I really like food, but I'm also really picky.  I will eat pretty much anything, but it has to be prepared right.  I'm sensitive to too much salt and weird textures and all kinds of things.  I like to rag on Q's family because they are picky eaters, but really I'm not the easiest person to make happy with food either.

That being stated, there are two restaurants in San Antonio that I really like.  One is a constant favorite of mine, Scuzzi's.  It isn't a chain and it's local.  They don't have a website you can access and it's located in a very unimpressive building in a strip mall off of 1604 and Northwest Military Highway.  Q likes to deliberately pronounce their name wrong so that it sounds awful, but they have the best chicken cacciatora that I have ever eaten and their cannelloni di pollo al forno impressed me so much that I attempted to duplicate the recipe.  It is moderately priced and definitely worth the trip.

Another restaurant that I'm going to laud is Fonda Argentina, on Henderson Pass about 1/4 mile off of 281 near the movie theater.  This apparently is a chain in Mexico and the one in San Antonio is their first in the states.  Q and I have been talking about trying it out for about 18 months, since the sign that it was coming has been posted that it was coming for that long.  We went for the first time last week and I wanted to blog about it then, but I left thinking I could look up the menu and info for the restaurant online and it turned out that they don't have an American website of any info for the restaurant we went to other than the address on the Mexican website.  Today I stopped by to get pictures of the menu though.

It's a grill, so mostly meat.  I'm not a big meat eater and Q couldn't pass up trying the Argentian style hamburger so I can't comment on the quality of the meat other than to say that the other customers seemed pretty happy.  Also, we didn't order any alcohol, but I saw a gentleman taste his and immediate grab the bottle to look at the label, so I'm thinking that at least what he ordered was very good.

I got one of each of the empanadas.  They aren't like Mexican empanadas or Panamanian empanadas (which I was sort of hoping for), but they were very good.  They are also large.  I tasted all six there, ate all of the rajas con queso (poblano and cheese), and brought the rest home.  The cebolla y queso empanada was like biting into a solid version of a gourmet French onion soup wrapped in a tasty pastry.  You could taste the wine, onion, and cheese mixture blended exquisitely.  I think next time I might get the Surf and Turf kabobs as the order that I saw going by looked very appetizing.

Here was our waiter.  He was great.  He recognized me today and was so nice both visits.  He took everything in stride from our ordering water to drink (which we almost always do) to my many questions.  He also laughed good-heartedly at my saying I wasn't much of a meat eater while showing up to what is essentially a steakhouse and offered suggestions to make me happy (though the ordering one of all the empanadas was my idea).

The menu:

This is the dessert I had.  It is the Alfajor con Dulce de Leche, traditional Argentian puffed pastry filled with carmelized milk. The name and description doesn't really tell you, but it is a little like baklava in that it is layers of flaky pastry filled with creamy goodness.

I told Q that I'm tempted to stop by once a week in the middle of the day with the girls and order just and empanada or two for lunch.  I can just see how they would feel about that in their fancy restaurant with my boisterous darlings running around.  I might just do it anyway.

The Haircut

Look what the nerdlet did to my head last night.  Just kidding, I let Q cut my hair late Friday night and this is an interim shot.

 This is my before.  It really isn't what I was looking like though because I brushed and brushed it to get as much curl out as I could before he cut it so it would be easier.

And this is the final result.  I really like it.  This is the second time I've done this, but the first time was in college and my hair was already pretty short so it was a bigger shock to me now.  Now that it has been almost two days, I've gotten comfortable with it and I really like it.

Bird Inspiration

Amethyst Starling

Emerald Starling

These are two of my favorite birds right now.  Someday, I plan on printing out the list of birds they have at the zoo and trying to see if I can find them all.

Painting the car

When the nerdlet was a little over a year, we inherited a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe from her cousin, which she had inherited from her cousin, which probably wasn't new when he got it.  You can see the spotted plastic here.  

Isn't the nerdlet cute here?  She's 20 months here.

We have since at birthdays for the bear cub and Darth baby acquired two new ones, one in red and yellow and one in pink and white.  They are in pristine condition as Grandma Elmo purchased them new for them.  So each time we pull out the cars, the nerdlet always wants to drive their cars instead of her own.  I decided to paint hers in an attempt to make her happier with it.  I used Rustoleum plastic paints from Joann's using the 40% off coupons.  I didn't prime her car, but I highly recommend  that you do, especially for a rough use item like this as the girls have already scraped off paint in a few areas.

I painted the base of the car French Lilac.

The top was painted Green Apple.

While it isn't perfect, it came out much nicer than it was originally.

What I didn't expect was a three way fight over the newly painted car (only two of the fighters are present in this photo).

Simplicity Bias Tape and Piping Maker

I've been eyeing it for a while, but since they are 50% off at JoAnn's right now and Q was telling me I should get one before the sale ended, I did.  I was skeptical because I don't really care for the gadgets that they make for them and most often just end up pressing it without one and I wasn't sure this would get used unless it made a perfect fold.  I've been sold now though.

You can turn over 22 yards of bias strip into single fold bias strip in less than 30 minutes, and it took me less than 2 hours from starting with the cutting to this finished roll of single fold tape.

I'm starting with how I make bias strips first.  Most quilters and a lot of people that sew have made bias tape and everyone has their favorite method.  This is mine.  I buy 1 1/4 yards of fabric and fold it into a triangle.  Trim the edges.

With the fold facing me, I bring one corner over 1/3 of the way.

Then I bring the other corner over the the fold so that it is even with the other folds.

I'm cutting 2 inch strips because the single fold default that comes with the machine is 1 inch and also, that is pretty much what I use on most everything.  I start by cutting 1 inch from the fold (because it is doubled over so will end up being 2 inches).

All subsequent cuts are two inches.

I usually end when it just seems ridiculous to sew on that length because the strip has become so small.

Then right sides together with the two pieces meeting at 90 degrees, I overlap them so that there is 1/4 (or the same length of the seam I am sewing) where the two pieces meet.

I just sew them one after another without backstitching at all (since the seam will be encased when I sew it only the final product).

At the end I have what looks like streamers I cold hang.  I cut the thread between segments and trip the seams to be straight where the strips meet.

You start wrapping the end with the right side facing out placing it under a clip.

When pointing downward, the end of the strip comes out of the right back side.

Place the spindle on the machine.  This much bias tape will not lay where the spindle is supposed to lay so I have it rigged slightly higher.

Then you lay it over a piece that my machine was missing when I bought it today (I'll go back for it) and thread it through the folding gadget.

Snap the folding gadget in.

Pull the strip through the heating element and roller.

Snap the top piece on.

Press the run button.  Here is a short video of this in action.  When I'm not taking a picture of it, I'm using my right hand to replace the missing guide and am wrapping the tape around the roll there with my left.

Here is what the other side looks like.  It looks great.

Then I had the idea that I could use the machine to make double folded tape even though there aren't any instructions to do so.  I pushed the tape off the roll back onto the spindle.

 I placed the spindle back on the machine.  It is even taller this time so I had to do some major rigging.  Then I put it over the guide (still missing, but replaced with a marker now) and pulled over the heating element and roller.

I replaced the top part.

Turned it on and pressed run.  For this I used my right hand to fold the tape in two and my left to keep in even as it passed through the iron part.

Another 30 minutes and I had over 22 yards of double fold bias tape.

If you use a lot of bias tape and make your own, this machine is a big time saver.  The cutting a prep part will take the same amount of time, but the folding and ironing of the bias strips into tape has been reduced by 4 to 5 times.