On Safety and the Good Old Days:

Okay, I am one of the first ones to admit that we are living in a toxic world. But I had high hopes. I was a young mother in the seventies. Pollution was turning around. They took the lead out of paint and I saw a rosy future through my glasses.

I grew up just outside of New York City on the Jersey side of the river. (The river with all the dead fish in it, back then before they cleaned it up.) Soon after I had my first child we moved to Pennsylvania. We could see the smog cloud over the city from the top of the Pocono mountains every time we went home for a visit back in the day. Some things have improved I have to tell you.

But my big complaint today is nail polish. Once upon a time you put on a coat of nail polish and it stayed and stayed. Now it seems to come off when I wash my hands. It chips and peels off at the drop of a hat.

Yes, yes. Hurrah, hurrah. Fewer bad chemicals on our fingers. But still I long for the old days. Nail polish that wore like iron. That I didn’t spend hours applying in multiple coats only to look down within an hour to find a chip in it.

I’ve tried them all over the last year or so. None are as good as the old poison stuff. I’m spoiled by bad products that worked for me. I’d give up painting them tomorrow if my nails weren’t ruined by the chemo. But I now need the protection of the polish on my nails.

So here is my dilemma. Do I find, buy and use the bad stuff and worry about cancer coming back or do I spend endless hours each week on crummy looking nails?

Where are the breakthroughs in modern science these days? Not in the nail polish isle at the local store at any rate.