Silent Teddy Bear Protest

I was a patient in Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin back in 1989. I had open-heart surgery to repair a birth defect and I will never forget the wonderful atmosphere fostered in the hospital. It was a friendly, vibrant place (wonderfully progressive for the late 1980s) and the staff did an amazing job.

I'm so disappointed to hear about all the recent plans to cutback services at the hospital, so I was interested to read about a Silent Protest planned at Leinster House for Saturday and Sunday. The official protest is at midday, and visitors are being asked to leave a teddy bear with the name of an affected child at the gate to Leinster House.

"We are having a silent protest at The Dail, Kildare st entrance,on Saturday and
Sunday. All we ask is that you bring a Teddy Bear to represent each of your
children or if you are not a parent just bring along a teddy.If you can stick a
sticker with the child's name on it-all the better.There is a free Family day on
both days at The Oireachtas.We are hoping for thousands of teddy bears to get
the visual effect we want.We want everyone in Ireland to be aware of the
cutbacks in Crumlin and to realise they could affect any of us at any time.You
can drop the teddy on your way in and where possible if the children can place
the teddy that will be best."

I'll be there on Saturday. This means something to me, having been a patient there. I hope that it means something to you too. Facebook page link.

I'm in Pain...

I've been hovering around the fitness issue for a while now. 3 years ago I was 63 kg, training in the gym and taekwon 3-4 times a week. It kept me in great shape, and I loved it.

Moving to Dublin and depressing winter evenings coming home from work, combined with a knee injury and surgery for a detatched retina, along with spending 6 months working crazy hours on a project in Brussels, means that I now weigh a good bit more than 63 kg. I'm still able for 30 mins of cardio, but I don't do any weight-training or martial arts anymore.

I love training in classes, so I decided to give the Body Combat class in my gym (LA Fitness in Dartry) a go. It turned out to be fairly demanding (and the more effort you make, the harder you'll work) but good fun. I hated the sh*tty dance music that accompanied the class, but I slogged through it.

The downside to all of this... I'm seizing up today. I know that my body will adjust quickly enough (it's kind to me that way) but right now all I want to be left lying on the sofa.

300 Free Cervical Cancer Vaccines

Isn't it amazing how the decent and unselfish actions of a few people can make you realise how messed up and misdirected this country is?

A consortium of four Dublin-based businessmen have donated enough money to purchase 300 doses of the cervical cancer vaccine and several G.P.s have agreed to administer the vaccine (and its subsequent doses) free of charge next Saturday.

It's hardly a replacement for the axed E10 million cervical cancer scheme, but hopefully the fact that people think that this is important will eventually register with the government. It may be a political stunt (one of the doctors is Dr. James Reilly, the Fine Gael spokesman for Health), but it's one that I can live with.

Proposed Link Between Female Birth Weight and Likelihood of Breast Cancer

I was watching the BBC News this morning, when I heard about a recent piece of research which claims to provide the strongest link yet between the birth weight and length of a female child and her likelihood of developing breast cancer later in life. It is estimated that 5% of all breast cancers could be explained by birth weight. Just a 0.5 kg (or 1 lb) increase in birth weight was deemed to correspond to a 7% increase in the risk of cancer.

The weird thing about this estimated increase in the risk is that it is of a similar magnitude to the estimate for other more well-known risk factors, such as alcohol consumption.

We can all do a lot while pregnant to give our child the best possible start in life (ie limited alcohol consumption, good diet, no smoking etc), but the dimensions of our child are possibly a little outside the realm of our control. Then combine this with the general upward trend in birth weights and sizes in the first world. Where are we going?