Interview

The service-learning project our group deicded to work on is cancer. Because of this, we felt that exploring how cancer affects the patient would bring more of a personal light to the disease. Knowing that there are people with families and feelings behind all of the statistics that are so often quoted makes one realize the importance of contributing to help find a cure. We decided to contact a relative of one person in our group who found out that she had an early stage ovarian tumor. The person's name is Debbie, and she was very cooperative with our request because she agreed that people will be more likely to help find a cure if they realize that it can hit close to home. The transcript of our interview is posted below:

Group: How did you find out you had cancer?

Debbie: I moved from Chicago to Bolivar, MO last year, and both my husband and I found new doctors and had routine checkups. My new doctor asked me if I had a papsmear recently, and I had not since I lived in Chicago. The doctor did his own testing, and when he called me on the phone he explained to me that he detected an small tumor. He wanted to perform an ultrasound. He did so the next Tuesday. He called me on Wednesday and indicated that the tumor may or may not be cancerous, but would have to perform immediate surgery in order to find out.
I told my doctor I had numbness in my back and often experienced lower back discomfort especially while lying in bed and getting out of bed.



Group: Was finding out that you had cancer difficult?

Debbie: Yes. My doctor referred me to a gynecologist. I made an appointment with my oncologist/gynecologist. He conducted a pelvic exam. I was very anxious to find out about what kind of treatments I would undergo and if the cancer would be terminal or not.



Group: After finding out about your cancer, did you experience any lifestyle changes?

Debbie: I did not experience any particular lifestyle changes. I feel that did have some mental changes, more specifically being appreciative of having found the cancer so early, because it would have surely been terminal if I didn't. When I had a checkup with my doctor before going back to work, there was a lady who had a terminal cancer sitting in front of me. I could feel her emotional pain and it made me even more grateful that I could continue my life normally after the treatments.



Group: How did your cancer affect your family?

Debbie: In my family many people were there to support me and they came to see me when I was in the hospital. My husband was affected just as much as I was because he had to be there for me and go with me during my treatments.



Group: How did it change the way you view life?

Debbie: Things don’t bother me as much as before. I feel that having experienced such a serious event caused me to realize what is important in life and not to make a big deal out of the small things.



Group: What advice would you give a person who was diagnosed?

Debbie: I don't really feel that I can give any specific advice because each case is different. However, I would suggest that the person say a lot of prayers and be hopeful. It’s a very personal thing, so each person must cope with the situation in a personal way that is effective for them.



Group: Do you think anything positive resulted from the experience?

Debbie: Of course. Now I appreciate each day and myself more. There's a level of seeing things each day as a gift and realizing that every day is not guaranteed.



Group: What would you have to say about the doctors with whom you dealt and the care you received?

Debbie: I was grateful to the doctor because he did his own testing. Had he not conducted his own testing there, and instead referred me to another doctor, I feel it was highly likely that I would have put off getting an ultrasound, and potentially had a worse outcome. He called me about 6 p.m. to try to get me to schedule a surgery appointment as soon as possible; he was a little emotional himself because of the emphasis on cancer . The surgeon was excellent. He listened to me and my husband's requests and had answers because of his experience. He was patient even though he was very busy. He came every day in the hospital to visit.



Group: How do you feel about the work of cancer organizations?

Debbie: Based on what I read on saw tv I realized that there are kind organizations out there. I personally did not deal with any of these organizations, but now I realize more so than before that it is important to support these organizations. I firmly believe that my situation may have been worse if not for research that was at least partially funded by these groups. I would suggest to anyone looking for a way to help people in need to think about donating time or money to a cancer awareness organization.

Post #1 Introduction to Project

This blog is being maintained by a group of three students at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, MO. The project is centered around a service learning effort in which we will be downloading and running a program in order to contribute to the efforts of a grid-computing project. Grid-computing is the linkage of many individual PCs to form a large and computationally powerful network capable of processing information much faster than could be done in a lab. In particular, our group will be working with the Folding@home distributed computing project. Even more specifically our group will focus on the efforts of furthering the knowledge on cancer as a disease.


Folding@home started on October 1st 2000, and is one of the older protein simulation projects . At last count the team had published 45 papers. The Folding@home team started by simulating proteins such as an alpha helix and has since moved to things such as HIV and beta-beta-alpha folds. The predicted folding times for these proteins were close to the actual folding times, and after testing the team was confident that their algorithim was on the right track. The team has since proceeded to computational drug research, studies on cancerous tumor supressors, and work on the folding of proteins and pepetides in small spaces. Their current and completed projects deal with Alzheimer's disease, cancer, Huntington's disease, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Parkinson's Disease, and ribosome and antibiotics. The project currently has 200,000 active CPUs and can be run on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and Playstation 3.


As mentioned earlier this blog will focus on the cancer aspect of the project and future posts will be more topic specific to that area. If you are intersted in joining the Folding@home project you can learn about and download the program at http://folding.standford.edu/ .


For a list of other grid-computing projects visit http://www.volunteerathome.com/sections/active_projects/active_projects.htm