Thanks, Flowergal. I review at WeeklyWilson.com and also on TheMovieBlog.com,
I've been reviewing film (a sidelight, as I taught and had "real" jobs, too) since 1970, first starting out in the real newspaper (Quad City Times, Davenport, Iowa.) In fact, I compiled my reviews from that paper in a book entitled "It Came from the 70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now." (available on Amazon with 10 trivia questions per film, with the answers upside-down on the next page.)
I have covered the Chicago International Film Festival for over 20 years and have done SXSW since about 2015 and also, over the years, have been Press at Sundance and the Vancouver Film Festival and in Denver, Nashville, and others (Windy City Film Festival, but that time I was a finalist in the screenplay competition.) The injury to my left knee was devastating for SXSW last year, but they were very kind to me, and, somehow, I made it through the continuous standing that occurs when you are waiting for the "stars" to show up. I hope to be able to continue reviewing, as I have for 52 straight years, for the forseeable future. I also write "long" on occasion and those works (30+) are up on ConnieCWilson.com. To say that I found being in a wheelchair for over half a year inconvenient is putting it mildly. Would any of us want to be unable to take ourselves to the bathroom? Is that the price I must pay to "protect" myself against a recurrence---being semi-crippled? It's not even a guarantee of protection and it's too steep a price to pay. As for the Tamoxifen, my good friend Sue Ann Raymond (now 84) had her lumpectomy in 2013 and was put on Tamoxifen and described how she could not even get out of bed! Sue Ann is an Episcopalian minister in small-town Iowa and she simply pushed the pills back on the oncologist's desk and said, "It's in God's hands." Since then, she has shepherded her flock, jumped out of an airplane to raise money for a new roof, and been approached to run for Mayor. None of those things would have been possible if she had remained on Tamoxifen back in 2013 when it was prescribed to "protect" her. It really is a "risks versus benefits" thing, and, while I am justifiably apprehensive, I practice what I call Eternal Vigilance and try to push thoughts of my demise to the back corners of my over-active imagination. I'm in Austin (Tx) right now, planning our annual trek back to Illinois to avoid the heat of summer and thinking about "writing long" again with a 4th book in my 3-book series "The Color of Evil." I'll be attending the Rolling Stones concert at Soldier Field on June 27 and, in the 3 days after that, the Sundance films are being shown in Chicago for 3 days (although I reviewed most of the winners on my WeeklyWilson blog already.) As I have written elsewhere, my mother---a 4-shots-a-day diabetic---lived to be almost 96 and played bridge ALL the time (once flying to Hawaii to play in a tournament that Omar Sharif played in!). I'm not about to quit living life, nor am I willing to suffer the tortures of the damned on the off chance that these toxic substances might "protect" me somehow. I'm going to be trying to find out about any other clinical trials of the sort explained here:
https://www.icr.ac.uk/news-archive/research-uncovers-how-to-target-sleeping-breast-cancer-cells-and-prevent-relapse?fbclid=IwAR30J3Q-rBjOi2h653iqloUDgUD-2TV6B9qUjB2G1uLrSk2Mnxb12SCW4OY_aem_Ac_UcOuM91zMYSJF2X-kEA47-wtYrIKVQjcqT08TocMmdZp6Z-yVPtB2EKZR2x9liFgCGfYbeVjOTOcI-CDMi9za