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There was lots of spin and some substance surrounding the RAND report on Edison schools in Philadelphia last week: Edison can show gains over time, report says Philadelphia Enquirer Rand Corp. gives Edison schools high marks Philadelphia Daily News Long-delayed RAND report: Edison Schools

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"When we take a look at the budget for the National Institutes of Health...it is, candidly, scandalous that with our resources, our research capability in biomedical science, that people are still dying of breast cancer." Senator Arlen Specter Wanton acts resulting in wholly preventable deaths make me so angry I could spit. Protesting against them is critical. But in some cases, no matter what you say or do, the reality is that money talks. I have no family serving in Iraq and I didn't lose anyone close to me on Sept 11, 2001. But like all of us, I've lost my share of loved ones in my lifetime. As brave Americans protest the rising body count in Iraq and we all review with horror recently released documents about our government's culpability in failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks, I am angered anew. But I am also stirred by my own memories of personal loss -- and I am desperate to DO something. So it feels appropriate and timely to advocate a national effort to prevent death and disaster from another source -- Breast Cancer. To help those fighting the disease get the adequate care they deserve, and to ask for your support in those efforts. Last month, I talked about my family's fight with Breast Cancer and noted that another one of my sisters had just begun to battle the disease. It hasn't gone so well. Today she is having a mastectomy. It's far too commonplace a story: an anomaly found on a routine mammogram, surgery to remove the offending cells, then more surgery to clean up the margins, and finally, when all else fails, a mastectomy. We haven't lost her, thank God, and we pray for the best, but--just as in a war, or under the threat of terrorist attacks--there are no guarantees. I mean no disrespect to the victims and families of the horrendous 9/11 and Iraqi War tragedies by directing attention to the fight against Breast Cancer -- but rather am seeking a way to make a meaningful contribution toward a battle to save other lives. It's been said, usually as a cruel joke, that if men had breasts, there would already be a cure for breast cancer. I find it ironic that the extent of breast worship among males hasn't had the same effect. But men still rule the world and control the research dollars. And until it happens--God forbid--to their own wives, daughters, mothers or sisters, they'll continue to spend more in a month on erectile dysfunction drugs than in a year on breast cancer research. So it's up to those of us who get it to dig deep and come up with the necessary funds to stop this disfiguring, devastating, often fatal disease. In honor of my sisters Betsy and Nan, my Aunt June and Cousin Kathy, my dear friend Mary and her sisters -- and in memory of Ma Mere, Mildred, MaryAnn, Lillian, Bobbie and my mother-in-law Jenneth Swift, I make this plea today: Support The Fight Against Breast Cancer The US Post Office The US Postal Service sells Fund the Cure stamps to help fund breast cancer research. The stamps were designed by Ethel Kessler of Bethesda, Maryland, and contain the phrases, "Fund the Fight" and "Find a Cure" with an illustration of a mythical "goddess of the hunt" by Whitney Sherman of Baltimore. Instead of 37 cents, this stamp costs 45 cents. The additional 8 cents goes to breast cancer research. A book of stamps costs $7.40. A book of Fund the Cure stamps is only $9.00. If you can you spare an extra $1.60, you'll help save countless lives. To date, the stamp has raised more than $37 million for breast cancer research. M&M's.Com Masterfoods (a subsidiary of Mars Inc.) has renewed its promotion to donate 50 cents to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation for every package of specially produced pink and white M&Ms sold, up to a maximum donation of $650,000. Got a sweet tooth? Help save lives while you indulge it. More tomorrow about the fight against Drive Through Mastectomies. For today, pray for my sister, please. Labels: Breasts and Boobs, Doctor Dramas and Dilemmas, Friends and Family buy cheap cialis Generic Viagra generic viagra online cheap cialis

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The October night after I refused a TURP (Transurethral Resectioning of the Prostate, or coring it out with a metal loop, like an apple) to solve my BPH (Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy), a refusal I made because of TURP's side effects--a possible 50% erectile dysfunction and 80% retrograde ejaculation--I got my groove back, or as one doctor put it, my "libido." For 4 1/2 months I'd been wearing a catheter and had believed I would have to have a prostatectomy because of my prostate cancer. When I found out that I didn't have to (my cancer appears in remission; after two years of a Chinese herbal formula, it hadn't been detected in my latest biopsy) a doctor still recommended that I have a TURP, not just for my BPH but because in resectioning the prostate a large enough sample of flesh would be obtained to check more thoroughly for cancer. I read in the 2005 issue of 'The Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy,' an issue devoted to prostate cancer, the comments of a guy who had undergone a protastectomy. He hadn't been prepared for the change in his body image, and hadn't realized that tumesence, climax and ejaculation were three different things: now he was stuck, without drugs, with only one of the three, and a deflated body image. I thought, DON'T LET A SURGEON CONVINCE YOU TO HAVE A PROSTATECTOMY WITHOUT A SECOND OPINION FROM A DOCTOR WHO IS NOT A SURGEON. But now I had also refused a TURP and that October night, even though I was still wearing my catheter, I felt a nocturnal tumescence for the first time in four months and was still firm in the morning. Not that I might not have been tumescent earlier. "Physicians believe that if a man has erections in the middle of the night," according to Jon L. Pryor and Stacey Glass' book 'It's In the Male,' "he has no physical or organic problem." " Most patients believe the erections they have when they wake up are the kind of erections they typically have all night. This is not the case. It is the erections a man has when he is sound asleep that are important for (physical) diagnosis. For such testing...bands are placed around the penis to detect the erections. Probes placed on the scalp indicate when a man is in REM sleep. Other monitors check breathing and heart rate. Finding out how often during REM sleep erections occur, how large the penis gets, and how firm, is the goal. NPT testing (nocturanal penile tumescence) is a great advance over what was used in the past, the old (postage) stamp test. For the mere cost of three to five stamps (depending on the size of the penis), physicians wrapped stamps around the penis. Their breaking apart during the night indicated some enlargement during sleep. In attempts to make a more sophisticated 'stamp,' various bands and cuffs have been developed... " For weeks after the return of my nocturnal tumescence I marveled at it, at the high that I had gotten just by saying NO! toTURP and at the firmness I felt in the mornings. During the days, I searched the St. Joseph's Hospital library and on the net, at PUB MED and GOGGLE for information on other, less invasive procedures than TURP to lessen my PBH. I found more than ten such procedures, some rather amusing--for example, a hot water balloon can be sent up your urethra to burn away excess flesh, as long as your prostate isn't misshappen. The least invasive procedure of all, a TUNA (Transurethral Needle Ablation, or microwave burning of two small holes near the bladder neck), isn't done in Bellingham so I phoned the University of Washington Hospital (where I had earlier hoped for a prostatectomy less invasive than a normal one, a laproscopic prostatectomy) to see if I might be a candidate for a TUNA. Instead, the doctor there tried to convince me to have an advanced form of a TUMT (Transurethral Microwave Therapy, or a microwave burning away of the mucosa (inner lining) of the urethra), a procedure that is available in Bellingham, but now called Coretherm ProstaLund, with an advancement that is not available in Bellingham, allowing better monitoring of the blood flow in the prostate during the procedure and therefore a more accurate use of microwave energy. ( I just tell my friends that Coretherm has a better thermostat.) The doctor finally did convince me--he had claimed there was very little chance of erectile dysfunction and 30% of retrograde ejaculation, and my research had found a 4.4% chance of erectile dysfunction and only 19% of retrograde ejaculation--and I agreed to submit to the procedure December 30, 2004. Now, on a May 2005 evening, I lay on my bed, two weeks after having taken care of any erectile dysfunstion with a 1/4 Viagra, this time after a 1/8 Viagra, still disapointed that I hadn't made any progress in curing my apparant 100% retrograde ejaculation. After seven months on a catheter (including two after the procedure) and two months practicing Tantra, my muscles let my blood flow in the right direction: but would anything else? Actually, in Tantra retrograde ejaculation is supposed to be a good thing: it shoots your sexual energy back into your body, recycling it through your chakras ("wheels," 6, 7 or 4 depending upon whether you're using the Hindu or Buddhist Tantric system) by waking your Kundalini (subtle female serpent energy) coiled around chakra number one (at your perineum), sending it up through your body and out the top of your head, whence a golden child appears above your crown. But I wanted to know that I was still fertile, to know that I COULD produce a child in the normal way, not just through the top of my head, whether I was really going to or not. In short, I wanted my ejaculation back. I lay there depressed: my erectile dysfunction seemed more that 4.4 %, in spite of all my Tantra without Viagra, and my retrograde ejaculation still appeared 100%. I lay between the cover of the book 'Betty Page Confidential' on my left (one should always pay obeisance to the Mother Goddess, the creator of all things in Tantra, whether one is gay or not) and a Colt greeting card with some mustachioed hunk lounging on his left elbow, wearing one leather glove on my right(My lover had died a year ago, his misdiagnosed lung cancer metastasizing to his brain). I thought how similar they were, the book and the card, in skin tone, lighting, neutral background and purpose. It was over, I was spent, but where had the passion been? Viagra just produced a physical sensation, a super-tumesence and an unfortunate climax, with still no ejaculate. I thought, How could I ever have have been talked into that Coretherm ProstaLund? My life was ruined, across the board, I felt, and better living through chemistry simply rushed blood from my head into my dry, barren penis--a penis that ironically was too much for my Tantra to handle. I knew I wouldn't always be this depressed, but my condition seemed permanent indeed. The next morning I decided to try once again. I whipped out my copy of Bruce Anderson's 'Tantra For the Gay Man' and re-read the paragraphs on ejaculation: "Most men have an orgasam when they ejaculate, and this single event becomes the the central drive of their sexual life. With practice we can learn to have multiple orgasams that don't include ejaculation. Prolonging ejaculation is generally a tool used to extend lovemaking sessions. To ejaculate requires flection of the back, gluts, abdominals, and quadriceps in the legs. In fact, some men enjoy flexing many of their muscles all at once to create one great come-pumping piston. The rise of the Kundalini through the spine, piercing the brain and blasting through the skull, is very similar to the rise of semen through an erect penis, blasting out and spreading your seed." That last is what I wanted--one good ejaculation--and I set out to work again. That October 2004 night, after I refused my TURP, I had gotten my groove back. This May morning, after 1/4 and later 1/8 of a Viagra, seemingly endless Tantra (sometimes twice a day) and several accidental, failed climaxes--I got my ejaculate back. DON'T EVER SUBMIT TO A TURP TO ALLEVIATE BPH WITHOUT CONDUCTING YOUR OWN SEARCH FOR LESS INVASIVE PROCEDURES. AND THEN--PRACTICE, PRACTICE. PRACTICE. Other books to help your practice include Betty Dodson's 'Sex For One,' available in the Bellingham Library, Margo Woods' 'Masturbation, Tantra and Self-Love' and Thomas W. Laqueur's 'Solitary Sex,' which aren't.

Tags: ejaculation, tantra, procedure, penis, turp