CURING CANCER

"Curing Cancer" is a headline that cheers me up, though it doesn't say "stop worrying" or "cross it off your list."

The list of bad news-killer ailments includes, of course, heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer's, and the other stuff -- cholesterol, osteoporosis, plus the oft-repeated kid stuff about cavities, eye strain, and you must-wash-your-hands.

If you aren't smoking, boozing, eating cheeseburgers, or thirty pounds overweight, what sticks in your mind are the constant, brain-washing ads, names, symptoms.

The pharmaceutical companies are not altogether to blame.

At first, as babies, we're cared for -- blissfully coddled, and then ... well, there's no age for when you begin to learn that hugs, baths, food, toys, and daily routines of eating, sleeping, playing are changing. Things just change. There are new things -- kisses when you say Mommy/Daddy and A-B-C-D-E, crayons, coloring books, how to draw a line or a number. Aside from good/bad, or right/wrong, or yes/no -- there are troublesome in-between areas that get messy-brownish, then darker and it's scary -- penmanship, numbers and DEATH.

The word enters your life. The imponderable thing of summer ending, birthdays, and dying. Flowers wither, leaves turn brown, toys get broken, but then, someone you know "died."

And the cared-for, watched-over, protected place you live in isn't safe anymore. Robbers, bad dreams, ghosts, skeletons, and diseases are lurking behind words that are spoken in whispers.

The first time someone you know dies you realize you are going to die. It's unacceptable -- all the things you have to learn -- a giant indigestible fat thick sandwich of dangers.

Mumps, Chicken Pox, Spinal Meningitis ... murders, police sirens, ambulances ... crashes, hurricanes, lightening striked, the house can burn and "Cancer."

A year or so goes by, and there's more -- war, bombs, nuclear deadly dangers, another war, terrifying terrorist deadly deeds, and Cancer.

And now -- hey, I saw it, read it, didn't try too hard to understand it -- I just got the gist! Doctors are now using what they've learned from curing the curable cancers -- early diagnosis, bombarding where it starts, and new medications -- applying-using what they've learned to improve the odds in the so-called incurable cancers.

Yay, hurray! The result: Scientists are stating that there are new hopes. new ways, new medicines, new numbers that show they're curing cancer.

Wow ... golly, if we could just do something about war, nuclear and terrorist stuff ... gee, life would be -- well, not beautiful -- but definitely more livable.