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Mornin' Mail |
To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
Heartburn Poses
Cancer Threat to Only a Few
DEAR DR. DONOHUE:
I have had heartburn for many years, and it has
gotten worse this past year. My doctor sent me to
a specialist, who looked into my esophagus and
stomach with a scope. He said I have
Barrett’s esophagus and that it can turn
into cancer. I’ve been quite nervous about
this. What are the chances that I’ll get
cancer? -- M.T.
ANSWER:
Heartburn’s official name is GERD --
gastroesophageal reflux disease. Reflux is a
backup of stomach acid into the esophagus, a
place that’s not designed to tolerate
stomach acid. The result is heartburn. In some
people with chronic heartburn, stomach acid
causes a change in the lining cells of the lower
part of the esophagus. That’s Barrett’s
esophagus.
Barrett’s can
progress to esophageal cancer. Keep in mind that
heartburn is common and cancer of the esophagus
is uncommon, so the cancer progression is rare.
Even though it’s never been shown that
control of reflux prevents cancer, you should be
taking steps to limit heartburn. Stay away from
chocolate, peppermint, caffeine, alcohol, fatty
foods, fried foods, citrus fruits and many tomato
products. Elevate the head of your bed by placing
6-inch blocks under the bedposts so gravity keeps
stomach acid in the stomach during the night. I
have to believe your doctor has you on medicines
that greatly diminish acid production, like
Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid, Aciphex or Protonix.
The cancer scare
is real but remote. It shouldn’t dominate
your life. You’ll be on a schedule of
follow-up scope exams, and the doctor will take
immediate steps if dangerous changes are seen.
You are actually in a safer situation than are
people who develop Barrett’s esophagus
without any symptoms. You’re being watched.
LETTERS from
a SELF-MADE
MERCHANT
to his SON.
by George Horace
Lorimer
First published October,
1902
Being the Letters
written by John Graham, Head of the House of
Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago,
familiarly known on ‘Change as "Old
Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont,
facetiously known to his intimates as
"Piggy."
No.18
FROM John Graham, at the
London House of Graham & Co., to his son,
Pierrepont, at the Union Stock Yards in Chicago.
Mr. Pierrepont is worried over rumors that the
old man is a bear on lard, and that the longs are
about to make him climb a tree.
XVIII
LONDON, October
27, 189-
Dear Pierrepont:
Yours of the twenty-first inst. to hand and I
note the inclosed clippings. You needn’t pay
any special attention to this newspaper talk
about the Comstock crowd having caught me short a
big line of November lard. I never sell goods
without knowing where I can find them when I want
them, and if these fellows try to put their
forefeet in the trough, or start any shoving and
crowding, they’re going to find me
forgetting my table manners, too. For when it
comes to funny business I’m something of a
humorist myself. And while I’m too old to
run, I’m young enough to stand and fight.
First and last, a
good many men have gone gunning for me, but
they’ve always planned the obsequies before
they caught the deceased. I reckon there
hasn’t been a time in twenty years when
there wasn’t a nice "Gates Ajar"
piece all made up and ready for me in some office
near the Board of Trade. But the first essential
of a quiet funeral is a willing corpse. And
I’m still sitting up and taking nourishment.
There are two
things you never want to pay any attention
to--abuse and flattery. The first can’t harm
you and the second can’t help you. Some men
are like yellow dogs--when you’re coming
toward them they’ll jump up and try to lick
your hands; and when you’re walking away
from them they’ll sneak up behind and snap
at your heels. Last year, when I was bulling the
market, the longs all said that I was a
kind-hearted old philanthropist, who was laying
awake nights scheming to get the farmers a top
price for their hogs; and the shorts allowed that
I was an infamous old robber, who was stealing
the pork out of the workingman’s pot. As
long as you can’t please both sides in this
world, there’s nothing like pleasing your
own side.
There are mighty
few people who can see any side to a thing except
their own side. I remember once I had a vacant
lot out on the Avenue, and a lady came in to my
office and in a soothing-syrupy way asked if I
would lend it to her, as she wanted to build a
crèche on it. I hesitated a little, because I
had never heard of a crèche before, and someways
it sounded sort of foreign and frisky, though the
woman looked like a good, safe, reliable old
heifer. But she explained that a crèche was a
baby farm, where old maids went to wash and feed
and stick pins in other people’s children
while their mothers were off at work. Of course,
there was nothing in that to get our pastor or
the police after me, so I told her to go ahead.
She went off
happy, but about a week later she dropped in
again, looking sort of dissatisfied, to find out
if I wouldn’t build the crèche itself. It
seemed like a worthy object, so I sent some
carpenters over to knock together a long frame
pavilion. She was mighty grateful, you bet, and I
didn’t see her again for a fortnight. Then
she called by to say that so long as I was in the
business and they didn’t cost me anything
special, would I mind giving her a few cows. She
had a surprised and grieved expression on her
face as she talked, and the way she put it made
me feel that I ought to be ashamed of myself for
not having thought of the live stock myself. So I
threw in half a dozen cows to provide the
refreshments.
I thought that was
pretty good measure, but the carpenters
hadn’t more than finished with the pavilion
before the woman telephoned a sharp message to
ask why I hadn’t had it painted. I was too
busy that morning to quarrel, so I sent word that
I would fix it up; and when I was driving by
there next day the painters were hard at work on
it. There was a sixty-foot frontage of that shed
on the Avenue, and I saw right off that it was
just a natural signboard. So I called over the
boss painter and between us we cooked up a nice
little ad that ran something like this:
Graham’s
Extract:
It Makes the Weak
Strong.
Well, sir, when
she saw the ad next morning that old hen just
scratched gravel. Went all around town saying
that I had given a five-hundred-dollar shed to
charity and painted a thousand-dollar ad on it.
Allowed I ought to send my check for that amount
to the crèche fund. Kept at it till I began to
think there might be something in it, after all,
and sent her the money. Then I found a fellow who
wanted to build in that neighborhood, sold him
the lot cheap, and got out of the crèche
industry.
I’ve put a
good deal more than work into my business, and
I’ve drawn a good deal more than money out
of it; but the only thing I’ve ever put into
it which didn’t draw dividends in fun or
dollars was worry. That is a branch of the trade
which you want to leave to our competitors.
I’ve always
found worrying a blamed sight more uncertain than
horse-racing--it’s harder to pick a winner
at it. You go home worrying because you’re
afraid that your fool new clerk forgot to lock
the safe after you, and during the night the lard
refinery burns down; you spend a year fretting
because you think Bill Jones is going to cut you
out with your best girl, and then you spend ten
worrying because he didn’t; you worry over
Charlie at college because he’s a little
wild, and he writes you that he’s been
elected president of the Y.M.C.A.; and you worry
over William because he’s so pious that
you’re afraid he’s going to throw up
everything and go to China as a missionary, and
he draws on you for a hundred; you worry because
you’re afraid your business is going to
smash, and your health busts up instead. Worrying
is the one game in which, if you guess right, you
don’t get any satisfaction out of your
smartness. A busy man has no time to bother with
it. He can always find plenty of old women in
skirts or trousers to spend their days worrying
over their own troubles and to sit up nights
waking his.
Speaking of
handing over your worries to others naturally
calls to mind the Widow Williams and her son Bud,
who was a playmate of mine when I was a boy. Bud
was the youngest of the Widow’s troubles,
and she was a woman whose troubles seldom came
singly. Had fourteen altogether, and four pair of
‘em were twins. Used to turn ‘em loose
in the morning, when she let out her cows and
pigs to browse along the street, and then
she’d shed all worry over them for the rest
of the day. Allowed that if they got hurt the
neighbors would bring them home; and that if they
got hungry they’d come home. And someways,
the whole drove always showed up safe and dirty
about meal time.
I’ve no doubt
she thought a lot of Bud, but when a woman has
fourteen it sort of unsettles her mind so that
she can’t focus her affections or play any
favorites. And so when Bud’s clothes were
found at the swimming hole one day, and no Bud
inside them, she didn’t take on up to the
expectations of the neighbors who had brought the
news, and who were standing around waiting for
her to go off into something special in the way
of high-strikes.
She allowed that
they were Bud’s clothes, all right, but she
wanted to know where the remains were. Hinted
that there’d be no funeral, or such like
expensive goings-on, until some one produced the
deceased. Take her by and large, she was a pretty
cool, calm cucumber.
But if she showed
a little too much Christian resignation, the rest
of the town was mightily stirred up over
Bud’s death, and every one just quit work to
tell each other what a noble little fellow he
was; and how his mother hadn’t deserved to
have such a bright little sunbeam in her home;
and to drag the river between talks. But they
couldn’t get a rise.
Through all the
worry and excitement the Widow was the only one
who didn’t show any special interest, except
to ask for results. But finally, at the end of a
week, when they’d strained the whole river
through their drags and hadn’t anything to
show for it but a collection of tin cans and dead
catfish, she threw a shawl over her head and went
down the street to the cabin of Louisiana
Clytemnestra, an old yellow woman, who would go
into a trance for four bits and find a fortune
for you for a dollar. I reckon she’d have
called herself a clairvoyant nowadays, but then
she was just a voodoo woman.
Well, the Widow
said she reckoned that boys ought to be let out
as well as in for half price, and so she laid
down two bits, allowing that she wanted a few
minutes’ private conversation with her Bud.
Clytie said she’d do her best, but that
spirits were mighty snifty and high-toned, even
when they’d only been poor white trash on
earth, and it might make them mad to be called
away from their high jinks if they were taking a
little recreation, or from their high-priced New
York customers if they were working, to tend to
cut-rate business. Still, she’d have a try,
and she did. But after having convulsions for
half an hour, she gave it up. Reckoned that Bud
was up to some cussedness off somewhere, and that
he wouldn’t answer for any two-bits.
The Widow was
badly disappointed, but she allowed that that was
just like Bud. He’d always been a boy that
never could be found when any one wanted him. So
she went off, saying that she’d had her
money’s worth in seeing Clytie throw those
fancy fits. But next day she came again and paid
down four bits, and Clytie reckoned that that
ought to fetch Bud sure. Someways though, she
didn’t have any luck, and finally the Widow
suggested that she call up Bud’s
father--Buck Williams had been dead a matter of
ten years--and the old man responded promptly.
"Where’s
Bud?" asked the Widow.
Hadn’t laid
eyes on him. Didn’t know he’d come
across. Had he joined the church before he
started?
"No."
Then he’d
have to look downstairs for him.
Clytie told the
Widow to call again and they’d get him sure.
So she came back next day and laid down a dollar.
That fetched old Buck Williams’ ghost on the
jump, you bet, but he said he hadn’t laid
eyes on Bud yet. They hauled the Sweet By and By
with a drag net, but they couldn’t get a rap
from him. Clytie trotted out George Washington,
and Napoleon, and Billy Patterson, and Ben
Franklin, and Captain Kidd, just to show that
there was no deception, but they couldn’t
get a whisper even from Bud.
I reckon Clytie
had been stringing the old lady along, intending
to produce Bud’s spook as a sort of
red-fire, calcium-light,
grand-march-of-the-Amazons climax, but she
didn’t get a chance. For right there the old
lady got up with a mighty set expression around
her lips and marched out, muttering that it was
just as she had thought all along--Bud
wasn’t there. And when the neighbors dropped
in that afternoon to plan out a memorial service
for her "lost lamb," she chased them
off the lot with a broom. Said that they had
looked in the river for him and that she had
looked beyond the river for him, and that they
would just stand pat now and wait for him to make
the next move. Allowed that if she could once get
her hands in "that lost lamb’s"
wool there might be an opening for a funeral when
she got through with him, but there wouldn’t
be till then. Altogether, it looked as if there
was a heap of trouble coming to Bud if he had
made any mistake and was still alive.
The Widow found
her "lost lamb" hiding behind a
rain-barrel when she opened up the house next
morning, and there was a mighty touching and
affecting scene. In fact, the Widow must have
touched him at least a hundred times and every
time he was affected to tears, for she was using
a bed slat, which is a powerfully strong moral
agent for making a boy see the error of his ways.
And it was a month after that before Bud could go
down Main Street without some man who had called
him a noble little fellow, or a bright, manly
little chap, while he was drowned, reaching out
and fetching him a clip on the ear for having
come back and put the laugh on him.
No one except the
Widow ever really got at the straight of
Bud’s conduct, but it appeared that he left
home to get a few Indian scalps, and that he came
back for a little bacon and corn pone.
I simply mention
the Widow in passing as an example of the fact
that the time to do your worrying is when a thing
is all over, and that the way to do it is to
leave it to the neighbors. I sail for home
to-morrow.
Your affectionate
father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
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