As a family physician, I explore the HEART of HEALTH in my work, recreation, community, and through writing. My blog, Watercress Words, informs and inspires us to live in health. I believe we can turn our health challenges into healthy opportunities. When we do, we can share the HEART of health with our families, communities, and the world. Come explore and share with me.
Celebration of Life Mural-The mural was created to honor those surviving the disease of cancer. The mural’s tiles are inscribed by cancer survivors and represent the continuous flow of life.
I went with my husband to a routine medical appointment and instead of sitting in the waiting room I wondered around outside. I came across this lovely garden area and was immediately intrigued by the decorated wall.
I was curious and decided to take a closer look; and of course, take some photos to share with you. I think the display speaks for itself, so browse and enjoy.
Celebration of Life Mural
June 1995-June 1997
The mural was created to honor those surviving the disease of cancer.
The mural’s tiles are inscribed by cancer survivors and represent the continuous flow of life.
Why a butterfly on a thistle?
Invasive thistles are noxious to livestock or other plants, but native species are harmless and even helpful to the environment.
Blooms on thistles attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Thistles host hungry caterpillars of painted lady butterflies, provide seeds as food for sparrows and finches, and attract insects that other animals feed on.
Native thistles are a largely misunderstood and wrongly maligned group of wildflowers. Many species of bees, butterflies and other wildlife rely heavily on native thistle flowers… monarch butterflies visit native thistle flowers more than any other wildflowers in some regions during their migration back to Mexico.
Despite the significance of native thistles to our ecosystems, these plants are often targeted for eradication along with the more widely recognized invasive thistles. Many native thistles are now threatened with some species at risk of extinction.
The butterfly and thistle sculpture is made possible through the generosity of the “Just Say Ho” Clown Alley.
Photographed by Dr. Aletha at the Troy and Dollie Smith Cancer Center, Integris Baptist Medical Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
“God is Good.”
“We don’t choose how we die but we do choose how we live.”
exploring the HEART of health through art
I’m honored you joined me to celebrate these cancer survivors’ lives and thankful for their willingness to share their journey with us.
Take time to enjoy the sunshine and don’t forget to smile.
Butterflies symbolize a deep and powerful representation of life. They are beautiful and have mystery, symbolism, and meaning and are a metaphor representing spiritual rebirth, transformation, change, hope, and life.
The magnificent yet short life of butterflies represents the process of spiritual transformation and serves to remind us that life is short.
“After You Hear It’s Cancer” by Dr. Lori Leifer and John Leifer offers a comprehensive guide for navigating cancer diagnosis and treatment. Drawing on personal experiences, the authors provide practical advice on various stages of cancer care, including diagnosis, treatment, and post-treatment challenges, along with resources for support and advocacy.
The article discusses the role of statistics in understanding health outcomes, particularly in breast cancer and COVID-19. It highlights the importance of epidemiology in guiding medical decisions and emphasizes the need for clear communication of data to prevent misinformation. Understanding statistics can lead to better health choices and disease prevention.
updated June 12, 2025
I reviewed a journal article about breast cancer, and as most medical articles do, it started with statistics.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, you probably weren’t too familiar with the medical science of epidemiology, which is all about statistics.
Epidemiology is the branch of medical science that investigates all the factors that determine the presence or absence of diseases and disorders.
National Institutes of Health
Statistics help us understand what has happened, what is happening, and what may or will happen. Statistics can help determine how something happened.
Epidemiology provides information that can be used to change outcomes in health and disease. Those outcomes may involve life or death.
Health data doesn’t help us much if it stays in medical journals or textbooks. Physicians and other healthcare clinicians use it to counsel patients and make medical recommendations about preventive care, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases.
How doctors use statistics to help patients
You might say we use them as “talking points” to convince people to do things we believe will help them and to avoid doing things we think might hurt them. You’ve seen the same thing happen when public health officials make recommendations about COVID-19 suppression. So a doctor might
recommend you do something -get a mammogram or wear a mask
a mammogram revealing a breast cancer
image source- National Library of Medicine, Open-i
caution you against doing something -smoking cigarettes or gathering in crowds
Ask your doctor about ways to help you stop smoking.
encourage a behavior-wearing sunscreen or keeping 6 feet distance
all based on knowing the epidemiology of breast, lung, and skin cancers, and COVID-19 based on statistics.
Breast cancer incidence and risk
So getting back to the breast cancer article, I think many women overestimate their risk of getting and dying from breast cancer. According to the article, in the
past 5 years, 2.3 million cases of breast cancer
in women have been diagnosed in the United States (breast cancer does occur in men but the number is so low it does not change this total significantly)
The mortality rate for breast cancer is 20 deaths/100,000 women. The most recent number for deaths in 1 year is 42,000. (United States)
Source: National Cancer Institute (NCI)
The majority of women have NORMAL BRCA.
COVID-19 by comparison
There were 27 million cases of COVID-19 February 2020-February 2021
diagnosed in both men and women in the United States. (And many experts suspect that thousands of cases have gone unrecognized.)
The mortality rate for COVID-19 then was approximately 134/100,000 people. The current number of deaths in the past year is 460,000. (These numbers are compiled by Johns Hopkins University and are current as of the original published day of this post)
WHO, the World Health Organization, reports that 2.3 million new cases of breast cancer occurred last year, while in less than a year there have been 105 million diagnosed cases of COVID-19.
Did these numbers surprise you?
Did they cause you to change your mind about something?
Will you change behavior based on these numbers?
What does it matter?
Healthcare professionals use statistics to understand and predict health risks, then counsel their patients about maintaining health and preventing disease, disability, and early death. One way they do so is with screening tests, like mammograms, to detect early breast cancer when it is easier to treat. successfully.
Public health professionals do the same thing, but apply the knowledge to large populations of people, such as infants, children, adolescents, pregnant women, or the elderly. And sometimes to an entire neighborhood, town, state, or nation, as we’ve seen happen with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, recommending masking, social distancing, handwashing, and vaccination.
But when health, especially public health, becomes politicized, these “talking points” can be used to
inflame rather than inform
manipulate not motivate
confuse rather than comfort
cause panic instead of instilling peace.
This is more likely to happen when we don’t understand the statistics and reasoning behind the recommendations. I believe much of the misinformation shared on social media unintentional, but stems from misunderstanding of the intended message.
This is the title of a new book by Financial Times columnist Tim Harford in which he tries to answer the question
Why do we believe what isn’t true?
In an interview by Erica Pandey, Harford encourages us to be curious and open-minded, and ask the right questions with a desire to understand. When you read or hear some new or disturbing information about any controversial topic, ask yourself if the teller is trying to make you smarter or trying to win an argument.
(AXIOS Today podcast February 5, 2021)
(This is an affiliate link, meaning it may pay a commission to this blog is a sale occurs.)
If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach them clearly—understanding how our own preconceptions lead us astray—statistics can point to ways we can live better and work smarter.
The Data Detective listing on Amazon
My 5 guidelines for making sense of information
RECOGNIZE any bias, inconsistencies, contradictions; does it confirm what you already know? If not, why not? What is it trying to make you believe?
RESEARCH other sources and other media, what do they say about the topic, and are they credible?
REVIEW all the information you find trustworthy; do you have all the information you need to make a conclusion?
RECONSIDER when new information becomes available or circumstances change; if significant, you may need to start the process all over.
REMEMBER almost everything is subject to reinterpretation; as the numbers change, so may the conclusions. Statistics give us a chance to learn and understand, but aren’t the best way to prove a point or to win arguments .
How to see through the hype in medical news, ads, and public service announcements
be a healthy skeptic. That doesn’t mean you have to be a cynic, simply disbelieving all the health messages you hear.
Instead, it means approaching messages critically: looking out for—and seeing through—common tactics used to exaggerate the importance of health problems or actions you can take to address them.
These tactics include emphasizing unimportant outcomes, avoiding numbers, or presenting statistics in ways that make them seem more important than they really are.
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watercress words by Dr Aletha 