natquen

OK, who is the American equivalent of The Nolans? The Australian equivalent? Sorry, only the UK cares about people like them who had 2.5 hits 40 years ago and who were 'big in Japan'. Sure, one hit wonders (and I know The Nolans weren't, in the UK) can be fun and fondly-remembered, but nowhere else on earth do they make front page news with their ongoing cancer battles and love lives 40 years after the fact and get stints on daytime talk shows. That is a uniquely British phenomenon.

Obviously not all UK-ers, but a sizable chunk... relative to other, otherwise-similar nations. I speculate it stems from being keenly interested in the lives of the Royal Family.

I think I've posted this here before, but I'm a big music fan, born in the late 70s, from Australia... and even I had never heard of The Nolans until the mid-late 2000s, after encountering some weirdo (and not in a good way) from the UK on a music forum who is a big fan. Granted, they (I later discovered) only had one real hit here, when I was 2. The UK seems to love tabloid gutter trashy acts/nobodies, so I'm not that surprised they still have a profile there.

It's probably not what they meant, but perhaps it was carcinoma in situ (cells that are sufficiently abnormal to be deemed cancer are there, but they haven't yet invaded through the basement membrane, and may never do so... so it's kind of a non-invasive cancer or 'stage 0'). Related to this, I read ages ago that there have been some cases of 'benign' tumours that have metastasised (without first transforming into cancer, that is). I would have thought that metastasis was the hallmark of cancer, but e.g. there's this report of a fatal, benign metastatic tumour from 1906 - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/455589

Lisa Schouw, lead singer of late 80s/early 90s Australian band Girl Overboard (they had a #23 hit in early 1990 with 'The Love We Make'), has died from cancer aged 62. http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-lisa-schouw-of-girl-overboard-20201003 The hit: Some lesser-hits but better songs IMO:

Lisa Schouw, singer of late 80s/early 90s Australian band Girl Overboard (they had a #23 hit in early 1990 with 'The Love We Make', and a #43 hit in late 1989 with 'I Can't Believe'), has died due to melanoma, aged 62. http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-lisa-schouw-of-girl-overboard-20201003

The stroke was my first stint in hospital - what a way to start! Well, other than a half-day stay I had a week prior for a diagnostic test.

I'm not prolific enough a poster to be noticed if something did happen to me (I mostly lurk), but I had a stroke 14 years ago this coming week, at the ripe old age of... 27. Yes, I nearly joined the 27 Club! Luckily, I made a quick and virtually full recovery - I have some slight (barely noticeable) reduction in sensation in my left arm as the only residual deficit. Are there any other deathlisters who've had their own brush with 'death', particularly at a relatively young age?

I only know 'I'm In the Mood For Dancing' and 'Gotta Pull Myself Together', as the latter was their only real hit in Australia, and I don't particularly care for either. But wow, they've had a hard run with breast cancer. I read in that Sun article that Linda hopes she might be lucky and last another 15 years or so.... riiiight. While there's an extremely slim chance of that happening, it is not looking good for her. I assume that stage 3 means it has 'only' spread to lymph nodes, so Anne has a much better chance of surviving this - although with COVID-19 lurking around, combined with a compromised immune system due to chemo, anything is possible. Didn't know about Coleen's comments. I assume a large proportion of the few people who still care about The Nolans' music are gay men, so how stupid can you be to draw the comparison to ISIS?

I'm pretty sure this study reported disease-specific survival. Having 'operable' pancreatic cancer does not, in itself, make it a curable disease for patients with operable disease. Most of them will still die from it, eventually; just, they'll be likely to stay alive with it for longer than those with inoperable disease.

It depends what you define as 'success'. Merely being alive, even if your body is still riddled with cancer, at 5 years is deemed 'surviving' it. I found a study a while back, which looked at the 20 year survival rate for various cancers, and pancreatic cancer only had a 0.8% 20 year-survival (the lowest of any site). So of that 5% who 'survive' 5-years, about 80% of them will still die from it within the next 15 years anyway. It's a killer.

You can have a recurrence of your cancer as late as 45 years after it was first diagnosed - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30730329 , and probably even later. The only way you can really be declared 'cancer free' is if they were able to look at every cell within your body under a microscope... probably at autopsy. And even then, a significant proportion of (otherwise 'healthy') people have microscopic occult cancer that was never diagnosed during their lifetime at autopsy. No evidence of disease is not the same as having no disease.

The cancer was in her shoulder in 2013 - that would be classified as a metastasis (stage 4). Granted, the shoulder bones are not, in themselves, a vital organ.

Yes, she does seem like a nice person. She already has done fairly well, lasting 6 years with stage 4 breast cancer. It probably won't become immediately life-threatening until it's in a vital organ (assuming it isn't, already), though she is looking skinny.

Here's her recent Australian 60 Minutes interview:

It always seems so prematurely optimistic when statements such as "X survived a battle with cancer"/"X has been declared cancer-free" are made - especially when it hasn't even been 5 years since their diagnosis. Even if you survive that long, it hasn't necessarily been cured. I've known two people in real life who died of their cancer 15+ years after it was first diagnosed (the same type of cancer), despite long periods of remission and apparently 'successful' treatment in between (one died 18 years later; the other, 21 years later).

Can't Shake the Breathing

Poor Val. I'm a speech pathologist - but not a specialist in voice/laryngectomy. It seems apparent that Val has had a neck dissection (where the lymph nodes in the neck are removed) - hence why his neck looks very 'thin'. It seems the tumour/s and/or the treatment (surgery, radiotherapy) has/have affected the function of his soft palate - which elevates during speech and closes off the nasal cavity (except for the nasal sounds, which are m, n, and ng in English); hence why he sounds so 'nasal'. It also seems he has some issue with managing his oral secretions (hence the sleeve wipe), and has a reduced range of moment on the right* side of his face and with opening his jaw. (*this video is shot in mirror image)

Once the tumour spreads Your life is just a thing of the past It was my first thought when I read the news of her cancer "returning"* in 2017. (*of course, technically, it never went away; but was just not clinically apparent for about 20 years).

Jeanne Little? My bad - I thought she was dead already.

I'm from Australia, so I only know of him really through his appearance in New Order's 'World In Motion' music video from 1990. Coincidentally, on another forum, a while back I started a thread titled 'The ravages of time', for comparing then and now pictures for 'celebrities' you haven't seen in decades. i.e. to compare how shockingly old they look now to when you last saw them. He was one I added to the thread. I don't know anything about him other than what I've skimmed here on a few pages of that thread (which may have given me the idea for the thread on the other forum).

I signed up just to get that off my chest, ha ha. Though I've been lurking here on and off for a little while.

One thing that irks me about the reporting of this and similar stories is that this technically isn't Livvi's third 'battle' with cancer - it's the same cancer she originally had. It didn't 'return' - it never went away (assuming these tumours are descendent from the cancer she was diagnosed with in 1992, and not from a second, separate breast cancer). Granted, the disease was not detected or clinically apparent for 20 years following conclusion of her chemotherapy regimen. But that doesn't mean the cancer wasn't there on a microscopic level, lying dormant and/or growing slowly. Odds are that some rogue cells broke off from her original tumour and set up shop in her shoulder/elsewhere before she was treated in 1992, survived the chemotherapy, and just took a long time to form a clinically apparent tumour. Although the cancer might not be apparent in any vital organ currently, I'm sure she would be categorised as stage 4. The sacrum is distant from the site of her original cancer, and on the other side of the diaphragm. This is not a regional occurrence. While she may not be on death's doorstep yet, the eventual prognosis is surely not good.