Latest news with #librarian
News.com.au
6 days ago
- General
- News.com.au
‘I knew it': Sign 28yo had ‘aggressive' cancer
An Australian woman who was diagnosed with aggressive cancer at the age of just 28 has revealed the symptom that ultimately tipped her off that something was not quite right. Sam Bulloch, now 30, began to notice some bleeding when she went to the toilet — something that she put down to haemorrhoids. But, two years ago, her bathroom habits — such as a change in how many times she needed to use the restroom — made her stop and think. Ms Bulloch realised she wasn't eating as best she could as she had just switched careers and was a busy new librarian, often opting for quick and easy, cheap meals, so she put it down to the changes in her diet. But it was Ms Bulloch's depleted energy levels that eventually made her see a doctor, thinking she was having issues with her iron levels and even possibly anaemia — which had happened previously. It got to the point where the young librarian couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without being puffed. A GP sent her off for a blood test and an ultrasound, also under the belief that it could be to do with her iron levels. But when a tumour was found in Ms Bulloch's colon — as well as spots on her liver and lungs — doctors discovered she had stage 4 colon cancer. 'My first reaction was, 'I knew it. When I started Googling after the ultrasound, when things started to get serious, I knew something was wrong,' she told Ms Bulloch said it prompted her to look back at her health history, and she realised the blood she found when she went to the bathroom likely wasn't haemorrhoids as she initially suspected. 'When I found out it was cancer, my mind when to the worst place possible. And, just because it was so advanced at the time it was found, I just didn't have a lot of hope, to be honest.' It wasn't Ms Bulloch's first brush with a deadly cancer. Two decades prior to her diagnosis, the then 28-year-old's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. 'There's a lot that I don't remember from most of it, and by that I just mean life felt quite normal all things considered,' she said. Looking back, Ms Bulloch said she is now in shock and awe at how her mother handled breast cancer with such grace. Eventually, it spread to her lungs and her brain. 'I do remember when she started to decline, and I feel like that's what sticks in my mind the most — just watching her get sicker and sicker,' she recalled. 'I think the hardest part was just watching her change and not feel herself. Towards the end, it was impacting her speech and cognitive function. She just didn't feel like the mum I knew in those last months.' It was this knowledge of how brutal chemotherapy could be that scared Ms Bulloch, as she'd had a front-row seat to her mum's decline. With cancer such as Ms Bulloch's, there was a few lines of standardised treatment. This includes two types of chemotherapy, with the third being to combine the two treatments for a more aggressive approach. She started off with a specific chemotherapy regime, and after doing some genetic testing to see what else could be given alongside the treatment, a more targeted therapy was also applied. Her body responded well to that, and she was treated for 10 months before its effectiveness was questioned by her doctors. Ms Bulloch was then put on a different targeted therapy before she was eligible for surgery. 'We were doing the surgeries with the intention to remove all the cancer — which, spoiler, sadly didn't happen,' she said. The first surgery was called an high anterior resection, which saw all of her sigmoid colon and the top part of her rectum removed. Cancer was also removed from her liver. Two months later, she had another liver resection which saw the whole right lobe of her liver removed. There were plans to operate on her lungs, where cancer was also found, but at the last minute her treatment options were switched. She is now on a different chemotherapy. Ms Bulloch is sharing her story on behalf of Australian Cancer Research Foundation's Centre for Dynamic Immuno-Oncology at The Alfred in Melbourne. The centre looks at the potentially lifesaving potential of immunotherapy, with a grant allowing researchers to watch cancer cells interact with a patient's immune system in real time. This removes the need for things such as blood or tissue samples, and could allow researchers to find a more targeted approach for a person's individual cancer. Ms Bulloch said one of the chemotherapies was among the first ever created and had been around for 60 years. 'That's a good thing in some ways, but it's also really rubbish to receive. It makes you so sick,' she said. 'With chemotherapy, you kill everything and so you have a lot of collateral damage with that. Whereas with targeted therapies, it looks for something specific. 'And I mean, I'm no doctor, of course, but I'm convinced that the incredible response I had to treatment at the beginning was because of the targeted therapy.' Ms Bulloch had side effects to her treatment, such as a severe rash, but she said this was nothing compared to other types of treatment that left her bedridden and unable to have a semblance of regular life. Carly du Toit, General Manager of Australian Cancer Research Foundation, told that immunotherapy is one of the most important breakthroughs in cancer treatment. 'But right now, it's only effective in some patients and others experience severe side effects or minimal results,' she said. 'Until we unlock its full potential for all patients, we haven't truly delivered on its promise. At ACRF, our mission is to change that. By supporting world-leading research, like the ACRF Centre for Dynamic Immuno-Oncology, we're working to ensure that this lifesaving treatment becomes a reality for everyone who needs it.' Colon cancer falls under the banner of bowel cancer, with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners reporting that it was up 266 per cent from the 1980s among 15 to 24 year olds. Ms Bulloch said no two cancers were alike, and so she believed treatment options needed to be tailored. The young librarian also said she is sharing her story to show that colon cancer can impact anyone, and it's important to be on the lookout for what the signs are. She said she's had friends confide in her, and she wants these types of conversations to be normalised. 'When it started happening to me the first thing I felt was embarrassed, which is so silly, that I was embarrassed that I was having bleeding,' she said. 'I just let the embarrassment stop me from doing anything or telling anyone about it.' She said she will continue to advocate so that others can have full autonomy over their health. And, for Ms Bulloch, she said focusing on the everyday moments of joy while dealing with everything that has happened over the last two years is helping to get her through it all. At the beginning of this year, she met her partner Sam on Hinge when both were initially set on deleting the app for good. 'It's been a couple of months now we've done so many fun things but also he's sat with me in some really tough things,' she said. 'I went through losing my hair shortly after meeting him, getting bad scan results — like the poor things really like not come into my life at a mountain top moment.'
Washington Post
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
6 readers on librarians, libraries and protests inside them
Regarding the May 10 Style article 'White House ties sudden firing of top librarian to 'pursuit of DEI'': The decision by President Donald Trump to fire Carla Hayden, the librarian of Congress, a scant year before her 10-year term ends perhaps ranks among his most crass, inexplicable and senseless firings. Hayden is both the first woman and the first African American to hold this, until now, apolitical post.
New York Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
I Reject Trump's Random False Rationale Generator
If the White House wants to fire the librarian of Congress, it can. But it was interesting to have recently had the experience of meeting this dynamic, dedicated person, and feeling so proud that she was our librarian of Congress, then reading the White House's sloppy, juvenile rationale for her dismissal; it gave me a visceral feeling for just how diseased this administration really is. I was the recipient of the Library of Congress's Prize for American Fiction in 2023. Dr. Carla Hayden struck me then as energetic, engaged and utterly dedicated to the work of the library. One of the things Dr. Hayden and I bonded over was the idea that knowledge is power, that in a democracy, the more we know, the better we are. The White House, tossing out nonsense from its meager box of repetitive right-wing auto-defenses, claimed on Friday that Dr. Hayden had, 'in the pursuit of D.E.I.,' done 'quite concerning things.' Did it name those things? It did not. It couldn't have. Putting aside the basic idiocy of being against that position ('What, you value diversity? You think things should be equitable? And that all should be included?'), members of the administration now use 'D.E.I.' as a sort of omni-pejorative, deliberately (strategically) leaving its exact meaning vague. What it seems to mean, to them, is: The accused is a person who is aware that certain groups have had a different experience of American life and who feels that it is part of our intellectual responsibility (and joy) to engage with that history, so as to improve our democracy (that whole 'more perfect union' thing). This the administration sees not as healthy intellectual curiosity but as dangerous indoctrination. Indoctrination into what? Truth, history, a realistic engagement with the past, I guess. The White House also stated, with an inaccuracy that would be comic if it weren't so sickening, that Dr. Hayden put 'inappropriate books in the library for children.' The librarian of Congress doesn't put books into the library. And presumably, the American people benefit from having access to the widest possible collection of books. Even those American people who are children, who, after all, have parents to decide what is inappropriate. In the real world, the world of cause and effect, when we tear down the best among us and provide bogus reasons for why we did it, reality will eventually come for us. To behave honorably requires that we be in contact with the truth, to be able to supply honest answers to simple questions. If the White House wanted to part ways with Dr. Hayden, why couldn't it, without insulting her groundlessly, do so, and then (truthfully) say why? One wonders. The firing of Dr. Hayden and the inane dissembling that followed represent a kind of diabolical Opposite Day phenomenon: An exceptional person is stupidly tossed aside, and to come up with an explanation the administration turns to its patented Random False Rationale Generator. When a ship is sinking, there's value in knowing how fast, and calling it out. When a country is self-sabotaging, ditto. So let me just say it: Shame on the White House. Shame on those who should be stopping this slide into autocracy and aren't. (I'm looking at you, John Thune, Mike Johnson and Marco Rubio.) Shame on all of us if we let these ignorant purveyors of cruelty reduce this beautiful thing we've built over these hundreds of years to a hollow, braying, anti-version of itself.
CTV News
12-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
Woman killed by falling branch in Côte Saint-Luc was a librarian who spent years promoting literacy for kids
Ljubica Milicevic, 76, is being remembered as a devoted librarian who spent decades inspiring children to read and love books.
Reuters
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
US deputy attorney general tapped to serve as acting librarian of Congress
WASHINGTON, May 12 (Reuters) - Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has been appointed to serve as the acting librarian of Congress, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman confirmed on Monday, after President Donald Trump recently fired Carla Hayden. The White House announced that Hayden was being fired as librarian of Congress on May 9, citing in part her advancement of diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Hayden, who was the first woman and first African American in the role, headed an office that has overall management responsibility for the library and sets out policy on its programs and activities. Democratic President Barack Obama appointed her in 2016 to a 10-year term in the role that needed Senate confirmation. Blanche is the latest Trump administration official to be asked to serve in multiple roles at the same time. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for instance, is also serving as the acting archivist, as well as Trump's national security adviser and the acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, meanwhile, is also serving as acting director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. FBI Director Kash Patel also briefly served two roles, leading both the FBI and the ATF.
