Sunday, December 21, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Life in the Australian Army...
Text of a letter from a kid from Eromanga to Mum and Dad. (For those of you not in the know, Eromanga is a smalltown, west of Quilpie in the far south west of Queensland )
Dear Mum & Dad,
I am well. Hope youse are too. Tell me big brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better than workin' on the farm - tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs are all gone! I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first, because ya don't hafta get outta bed until 6am. But I like sleeping in now, cuz all ya gotta do before brekky is make ya bed and shine ya boots and clean ya uniform. No bloody cows to milk, no calves to feed, no feed to stack - nothin'!! Ya haz gotta shower though, but its not so bad, coz there's lotsa hot water and even a light to see what ya doing!
At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there's no kangaroo steaks or possum stew like wot Mum makes. You don't get fed again until noon and by that time all the city boys are buggered because we've been on a 'route march' - geez its only just like walking to the windmill in the back paddock!!
This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter. I keep getting medals for shootin' - dunno why. The bullseye is as big as a bloody possum's bum and it don't move and it's not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our big scrubber bull got into their prize cows before the Ekka last year! All ya gotta do is make yourself comfortable and hit the target - it's a piece of piss!! You don't even load your own cartridges, they comes in little boxes, and ya don't have to steady yourself against the rollbar of the roo shooting truck when you reload!
Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy - it's not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once like we do at home after the muster.
Turns out I'm not a bad boxer either and it looks like I'm the best the platoon's got, and I've only been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers - he's 6 foot 5 and 15 stone and three pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know I'm only 5 foot 7 and eight stone wringin' wet, but I fought him till the other blokes carried me off to the boozer.
I can't complain about the Army - tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around how bloody good it is.
Your loving daughter,
Sheila
Dear Mum & Dad,
I am well. Hope youse are too. Tell me big brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better than workin' on the farm - tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs are all gone! I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first, because ya don't hafta get outta bed until 6am. But I like sleeping in now, cuz all ya gotta do before brekky is make ya bed and shine ya boots and clean ya uniform. No bloody cows to milk, no calves to feed, no feed to stack - nothin'!! Ya haz gotta shower though, but its not so bad, coz there's lotsa hot water and even a light to see what ya doing!
At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there's no kangaroo steaks or possum stew like wot Mum makes. You don't get fed again until noon and by that time all the city boys are buggered because we've been on a 'route march' - geez its only just like walking to the windmill in the back paddock!!
This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter. I keep getting medals for shootin' - dunno why. The bullseye is as big as a bloody possum's bum and it don't move and it's not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our big scrubber bull got into their prize cows before the Ekka last year! All ya gotta do is make yourself comfortable and hit the target - it's a piece of piss!! You don't even load your own cartridges, they comes in little boxes, and ya don't have to steady yourself against the rollbar of the roo shooting truck when you reload!
Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy - it's not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once like we do at home after the muster.
Turns out I'm not a bad boxer either and it looks like I'm the best the platoon's got, and I've only been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers - he's 6 foot 5 and 15 stone and three pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know I'm only 5 foot 7 and eight stone wringin' wet, but I fought him till the other blokes carried me off to the boozer.
I can't complain about the Army - tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around how bloody good it is.
Your loving daughter,
Sheila
Friday, December 19, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Gastric banding helps big women have babies
Weight-loss surgery can help obese women conceive babies more easily through IVF, according to research showing lap bands can partially restore fertility. Very overweight Australian women have been increasingly taking up the option of bariatric surgery after failing to fall pregnant naturally, and a new study from the US backs the move.
A team from Washington University reviewed the records of five obese women who underwent bariatric surgery followed by IVF.Three of the women got pregnant after just one treatment cycle and delivered healthy full-term infants, while the other two women are still pregnant after requiring three cycles.
Lead researcher Dr Beth Lewkowski told a fertility conference in San Francisco that all five women had been infertile for two to 10 years before the surgery. Dr Anne Clark, a fertility specialist in Sydney, said while no such study had been completed in Australia there had been a steep increase in women seeking weight-loss surgery to improve fertility.
Obese women undergoing fertility treatment generally have less success, require higher doses of medication to help get them to ovulate, and have a higher miscarriage rate.
"We have been able to show that women with a body mass index (BMI) under 35 kilograms can dramatically improve their chances of pregnancy with just seven kilos of weight loss," Dr Clark said.
"But women who are very obese, with a BMI of 40 or more, need to lose even more weight to have the same success, and that can be impossible for some women to do naturally.
"It's in these cases women get surgery, and we definitely notice it helps."
Professor Rob Norman, director of the Research Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Adelaide, said that gastric banding, in which a rubber band is surgically wrapped around the stomach, was getting the best results.
"It's something we are going to see more and more among very big people, and it's clear there a big benefits for the women and for their babies," Prof Norman said from San Francisco.
About 14,000 Australians are expected to get lap band surgery this year, with guidelines requiring patients to have a BMI over 30 and have failed to lose weight by other means. About 80 per cent of patients were female, but only a very small proportion sought surgery primarily to aid pregnancy, obesity experts say.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
IVF does not raise breast cancer risk
A new research has dispelled fears that In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) may elevate women's risk of developing breast cancer.
The nationwide study in the Netherlands found that the fertility treatment has no effect on the disease.
Although no firm link between IVF and breast cancer has been established, some boffins are worried about the potential effects of fertility drugs used to stimulate the ovaries so that eggs can be collected and fertilised, reports Times Online.
These expose the body to high levels of oestrogen, a female hormone to which some breast tumours are sensitive.
The research, which was led by Alexandra van den Belt-Dusebout, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute, should reassure women considering fertility treatment that it does not pose a breast cancer risk.
The study was presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in San Francisco last month.
In the study, the Dutch team used a national registry to investigate more than 25,000 women who received IVF or other fertility treatments between 1980 and 1995. Almost 19,000 of the women had had IVF, while the other sub-fertile women had had different treatments or none.
There was no statistically significant difference in breast cancer incidence between either group as a whole and the general population. There was a slight increase in breast cancer risk among the infertility patients who had been followed up for the longest periods - 15 years - but this was accounted for by the size of their families.
The study also compared women who had had different numbers of IVF cycles, and found no relationship between extra cycles and breast cancer risk.
The nationwide study in the Netherlands found that the fertility treatment has no effect on the disease.
Although no firm link between IVF and breast cancer has been established, some boffins are worried about the potential effects of fertility drugs used to stimulate the ovaries so that eggs can be collected and fertilised, reports Times Online.
These expose the body to high levels of oestrogen, a female hormone to which some breast tumours are sensitive.
The research, which was led by Alexandra van den Belt-Dusebout, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute, should reassure women considering fertility treatment that it does not pose a breast cancer risk.
The study was presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in San Francisco last month.
In the study, the Dutch team used a national registry to investigate more than 25,000 women who received IVF or other fertility treatments between 1980 and 1995. Almost 19,000 of the women had had IVF, while the other sub-fertile women had had different treatments or none.
There was no statistically significant difference in breast cancer incidence between either group as a whole and the general population. There was a slight increase in breast cancer risk among the infertility patients who had been followed up for the longest periods - 15 years - but this was accounted for by the size of their families.
The study also compared women who had had different numbers of IVF cycles, and found no relationship between extra cycles and breast cancer risk.
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