Week in review
Sometimes it’s easy to miss an event, so here’s a look back at the past week or so to help bring you up to date.
Interact with cancer Web page
‘Know It: Cancer’ is NewsOK.com and The Oklahoman’s first installment of what will become a monthly project on topics that affect the community.
To find the special page, search ‘cancer’ on NewsOK.com.
As well as a wealth of information in videos, articles and links, the page opens the doors to the biggest, fastest growing source of information available: you.
Share your wisdom
Through the interactive message boards on the page, which can be found under the sub-heading ‘Share Your Wisdom’, you can have your say on a variety of topics relating to cancer.
Please share your information on how to choose a physician who will give you confidence, on how the costs of treatment can be handled, on dealing with cancer from a caregiver’s point of view and more. These message boards can be the starting point of just the kind of information you were looking for.
They are more than just a place to give information: They are designed to be the place where people can find support and ask the questions they can’t find answers to. The place where an open, honest conversation can be conducted without judgment or embarrassment.
Find an event
Another exciting, interactive element of the page is the cancer-related events calendar powered by wimgo.com, OPUBCO’s online events calendar. You can see upcoming events like support groups and charity events, and you can find other events in the handy search bar.
Tell your story
If you have a story about cancer – yours or a loved ones – we want you to upload that story to our Web site. Through a simple series of a few clicks, you can tell the world about your experience.
On the page, click the link on the video player that says ‘Share your wisdom. Submit your video’. It will walk you through uploading your video file and within a day or two your video will be on the page.
Maybe you’re just starting chemotherapy and want to give a weekly update on your treatment; maybe you are caring from someone dear to you with cancer and you want a place to share your experience; or maybe you are a survivor of cancer and want to pass along a message to those going through treatment. It doesn’t matter exactly what your story is, this is the place to share your story through video.
In an increasingly interactive online world, we wanted to give you the opportunity to share your story in many different ways.
You never know who you might touch by sharing what you know and what you went though.
- Lindsay Hodges, Web editor
A trip to Wynnewood
Southern Oklahoma’s G.W. Exotic Animal Park says it has eight members of a lion subspecies that’s extinct in the wild. They’re called Barbary lions, and they once were native to North Africa. Only 100 are thought to live in zoos around the world.
I went to the town of Wynnewood this week to see the lions. A new cub named Oliver was born there earlier this month. Here’s a slice of the experience: (also check out a story tomorrow in The Oklahoma)
A trip to the G.W. park feels more like a visit an outdoor kennel than a stroll in a zoo. Tigers roam tight cages and perch on cinder-block houses, their backs sometimes almost touching cage ceilings.
Some animals have muddy puddles to play in. Others, like lions and tiger cubs, have spare toys to toss around — a basketball, stuffed animal or a tattered Puma shoe.
So many animals surround visitors that it can feel like they’re being hunted.
On a tour, a park worker insisted the animals are content. But approach a lion, and chances are it will become irritated enough to spin around, lift its tail, and spray at you — a warning to get off its territory.
That wouldn’t seem like a problem, perhaps, until you know that visitors are within an arm’s length of the cages.
Beth Corley, the park worker, approached the cage with a rare lion cub’s parents in it. The two lion parents — Inkendayo and Ada — were cuddled up in the corner.
“You can see the long, thin nose, which is characteristic of the Barbary,” she said. “And the laziness is just the lion.”
After some coaxing, the lions hopped to their feet. Ikendayo’s long, chocolate mane trailed down to his mid-back.
Soon, Corley was paw-to-paw with a lion, then petting its nose.
“So far, we haven’t had any answers that we can come up with,” she said. But “they certainly look like it.”
John David Sutter
Environmental Writer
jsutter@oklahoman.com
