My Daughter will soon be ONE LESS

You guessed it! She’s started the 3 part vaccination process with Gardasil the Human Papillomavirus Quadrivalent (Types 6, 11, 16, and 18) Vaccine, Recombinant. If you’re not sure what that is, visit www.GARDASIL.com and read up on it.

It was just a matter of time before we got the vaccine going for my teen. When it first came out I knew it would take a little while for the insurance companies to get their act together, so we waited. When we went in a couple of weeks ago and had the opportunity to ask about this our family doctor insisted it was a smart choice.

Gardasil does NOT prevent against all 100+ types of HPV but it does prevent two types that can cause cervical cancer and two more types that can cause genital warts. Hello People, CERVICAL CANCER can be prevented? That’s the biggest reason to get your girls vaccinated when it comes time.

I asked my doctor when the four and two year old could get vaccinated and she told me that eventually they will be setting it up to encourage parents to have it done before Junior High School years.

So once you get the first shot you go back two months after the 1st appointment for another shot. Once you get the second shot you back back six months after the 1st appointment. (In other words, every two months until the three part series is completed.)

That’s definitely ONE LESS thing that we will have to worry about. Science and medical breakthrough never cease to amaze me.

Teen Heartbreak all over the World

This is one example of Teen Love gone wrong. Young girl falls in love with young guy. Young guy wants to have sex with young girl so he says and does everything right to get in her pants. Young girl falls for young guy’s advances even though it’s not sitting right deep down inside. And the story goes on…

The story goes on like this one all over the world because I’m pretty certain this isn’t the only scenario where two teens have sex and one winds up with a sexually transmitted disease for the first time. I’m pretty sure you could probably switch the scenario around and make the girl the aggressor and the young guy in a bad spot as well.

Hopefully teens are thinking about what can  happen as a result of having sex. Sex is a serious thing and not something to be flippant about. Sometimes even waiting for the right person to come along can come with its consequences if you aren’t ready and able to talk about STDS and make a date to go and get tested BEFORE you have sex.

So here we have a story written by an anonymous teenager that wants others to know that she understands where you are coming from and what you might be going through.

I would also like to mention that it was suggested that men never seem to be at any of the Planned Parenthood locations. I would suspect that it might have something to do with the fact that Planned  Parenthood doesn’t really reach out to help young men unless young men have no place else to turn. Am I happy about that? No, because it is what it is. I have heard Planned Parenthood will see men but then again.. it caters only to women. You’ll have to contact Planned Parenthood to find out why that is.?

If you  have a story you’d like to share feel free to contact me and let me know how little or how much information you’d like to include. I will be happy to put a page together and share it as I’ve done with this one.

True Inspirational Stories are meant to be shared, are they not?

Here’s an Updated True Story

For years Tamara has been an advocate for people that need help with their situation. She has generously shared her story, included photos, and has recently posted an update that she wants to share with you. Here is that link:

http://yoshi2me.com/stories/tamara.html

If you would like to share your story so others will begin to understand that they are not alone you are welcome to do so. You can include as little OR as much information as you would like and your story need not be limited to STDS.

If this is something you are interested in doing feel free to send your stories, pictures, OR anonymously if you’d like to: yoshi2me [at] cox [dot] net

Thanks!!

Angela
http://yoshi2me.com/

October 2008 Social Event Details

Oct 3-5, 2008 - Hosted by Philadelphia Friends - This is the 3rd Philly national event. Hotel: Holiday Inn Philadelphia National Airport - Mention “Philadelphia Friends Group” for $89 per night special rate. Events include dinners, sightseeing, tours, museum, pub crawl, casino gambling. You are welcome to come early and spend Wednesday night with members of Philadelphia Friends for their ongoing monthly happy hour at The Dark Horse (bar/restaurant in Olde City Philadelphia). Please join us in making new friends and greeting familiar faces. (www.philafriends.org)

If you need help networking your social events don’t hesitate to let me know. Not only am I posting links to your group from the SSNA but I am also posting your event details on my Event Details pages as well as special notices on forums that I participate in.

Celebrities with Hepatitis C

Natalie Cole was recently diagnosed with Hepatitis C.

According to her doctor:

“Natalie has had a terrific response to her medication and is now virus negative,” Woolf, the Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCLA/Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said. “This gives her an increased chance of cure.”

More Celebrities with Hep C:

Katie Price aka Jordan gets cold sores too

According to NOW online - Peter Andre, Jordan’s husband doesn’t kiss her when she has cold sores and admits that she gets them when she is working hard and feeling run down. 

I wonder what Jordan takes in order to get through her cold sore spell. That’s probably a good idea not to kiss her on the mouth directly but I have to wonder if Peter Andre already has type-1 Herpes in his system and doesn’t know it. After all, it’s not really included in proper STD testing now, is it..

Isn’t she a gorgeous woman? Her husband is handsome but not as good looking as she is. I was reading on that site that I found that she’s talking about getting boob job #5. I don’t think she needs to get any  more boob jobs, do you? I think the twins look find just how they are and I’m sure Peter Andre would agree.

New Stuff Added to the Site

I have a couple of announcements to make but before I do that I sure hope everybody is having a wonderful summer.

First on the list is a brand new story called “Break Free” posted on the Inspirational Stories pages..

Next we have a brand new H Pal representing the area around Albany, New York..

Since we added a brand new H Pal for new york that meant I got to put together a home page for H Pals representing New York..

What that means is that anybody can be an H Pal even if it looks like your state is already represented. We can always use more people as there is a lot of ground to cover.. ya know?

You can find the rest of our H Pals here..

We’ve got quite a few states represented as well as people from other countries. If this is something you think you would be interested in doing then send me a couple of paragraphs along with a photo of yourself in jpg format. The more the merrier!

Some of you might have attempted to reach me through my feedback page on the site. Well, I had that offline for awhile with a sign up letting folks know that I would be back soon. That is why some of you H Pals haven’t received anything lately from people trying to contact you. Thankfully we still have the Shut Up N Post! forum along with Picking Up the Pieces going where folks can ask questions. Now that I’m back from my little break we’ll probably all start to get e-mails again. Here’s where the feedback page is..

Well, that’s all I have for now.

Best Wishes,

Angela
aka: Yoshi

Break Free!

The information you have the internet is cool!

I have lived with herpes since I was 15 years old. I am 34 years old and I have allowed it to dictate my life and run me! You can just about imagine my life!

Well, I am in the process of getting healing for my soul through the work of the Holy Spirit and he led me to get on the website to look for support and through that I found your site.

I am currently married, but we are separated (a decision I allowed my low self-worth to make)— You can imagine what kind of marriage that was: HELL!!!

Anyway, I am in the process of not letting herpes nor the devil tell me HERPES is all that I am…Cause I am more and will be more than the thing that plagues my body….

Anyway, thank you so much for your courage….

I don’t have that kind of courage right now. Only a few people know in my life, of course my husband, who uses it against me whenever he can find a free moment…ha ha…Thanks again and I will get on the computer more often now….

I AMFREE

Is this a chance to finally kill the herpes virus for good?

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday they may have found a way to flush out herpes viruses from hiding — offering a potential way to cure pesky and painful conditions from cold sores to shingles.

They discovered that a mysterious gene carried by the herpes simplex-1 virus — the one that causes cold sores — allows the virus to lay low in the nerves it infects.

It does so via microRNAs, little pieces of genetic material that regulate the activity of many viruses, the researchers report in the journal Nature.

It may be possible to "wake up" the virus and then kill it with standard antiviral drugs such as acyclovir, said Jennifer Lin Umbach of Duke University in North Carolina, who worked on the study.

"We are trying to go into animal trials," Umbach said in a telephone interview.

The Duke team is discussing a potential collaboration with Regulus Therapeutics LLC, a joint venture between Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc and Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc that specializes in microRNAs.

Herpes viruses cause permanent infections. They head straight to nerve cells, where they stay latent for the life of an animal or person, often causing periodic outbreaks.

Herpes simplex 1 or HSV-1 causes cold sores, HSV-2 causes genital herpes, while varicella causes chicken pox and returns in middle or old age as herpes zoster to cause shingles.

Acyclovir and related drugs can suppress symptoms but only when the virus is active.

IMPOSSIBLE TO KILL

"Inactive virus is completely untouchable by any treatment we have. Unless you activate the virus, you can’t kill it," said Bryan Cullen, who oversaw the research.

Umbach said that for still unknown reasons, viruses infecting different neurons in the same body activate at different times, making it impossible to eradicate an infection.

Her team found that a gene called LAT controls microRNAs that turn off other genes in the virus.

"The presence of these active microRNAs keep the virus dormant," Umbach said. "When the virus is activated by stress like UV (ultraviolet) light or a wound, production of (other) genes goes up."

Then LAT is overwhelmed and unable to keep the virus in check. It wakes up and causes an outbreak.

A drug that would turn off the microRNAs could drive the virus out of hiding and allow all copies of the virus to be killed with acyclovir, she said.

"You would have one cold sore but you would get rid of it," she said. Curing something more painful, such as shingles, might be a little trickier, she added.

One class of drug called an antagomir might work, Umbach said. These chemically engineered oligonucleotides are short segments of RNA that can be made into mirror images of a targeted bit of genetic material — such as the herpes microRNAs. They would attach and "silence" the microRNA.

The potential market is large. An estimated one in five Americans have genital herpes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while 100 million have the HSV-1 virus that causes cold sores.

The CDC estimates there are a million cases of shingles every year in the United States alone.

Read the entire article here

Awareness & Advocacy Discussion

This article is used strictly for educational purposes. It’s not often that I repost them so when I do it just means that I think they are worth checking into.

Happy 4th of July

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