Growing up to belong transnationally : parent perceptions on identity formation among Latvian emigrant children in England

As a result of the wide availability of social media, cheap flights and free intra-EU movement it has become considerably easier to maintain links with the country of origin than it was only a generation ago. Therefore, the language and identity formation among children of recent migrants might be significantly different from the experiences of children of the previous generations. The aim of this paper is to examine the perceptions of parents on the formation of national and transnational identity among the ‘1.5 generation migrant children’ – the children born in Latvia but growing up in England and the factors affecting them. In particular, this article seeks to understand whether 1.5 generation migrant children from Latvia construct strong transnational identities by maintaining equally strong ties with their country of origin and mother tongue and, at the same time, intensively creating networks, learning and using the language of the new home country. The results of 16 semi-structured in-depth interviews with the parents of these children reveal that the 1.5 generation Latvian migrants are on a path of becoming English-dominant bilinguals. So far there is little evidence of the development of a strong transnational identity among 1.5 generation migrant children from Latvia. Instead, this study observed a tendency towards an active integration and assimilation into the new host country facilitated by their parents or occurring despite their parents’ efforts to maintain ties with Latvia. These findings suggest that rather than the national identity of the country of origin being supplemented with a new additional national identity – that of the country of settlement – the identity of the country of origin becomes dominated by it instead

Durable Effect of Radioactive Iodine in a Patient with Metastatic Follicular Thyroid Carcinoma

Objective. Thyroid cancer is the most common endocrine malignancy and fastest increasing of all cancers in both men and women in the United States. Traditionally, differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) carries a good prognosis when diagnosed early, but increasingly patients are presenting with late-stage disease and bone metastasis which carries a poor prognosis. Treatment of DTC involves surgical resection followed by radioactive iodine (RAI), which conventionally is thought to reach maximal effectiveness between 6 and 12 months following treatment. We report a case and review the literature surrounding long-term effect of radioactive iodine treatment in metastatic thyroid carcinoma. Methods. Patient clinical encounter and the literature review. Results. We describe a 49-year-old woman with symptomatic metastatic follicular thyroid cancer (FTC) to the spine and radiographic evidence of spinal cord compression who was effectively treated with RAI. Her initial serum thyroglobulin (Tg) levels following total thyroidectomy were 1,343 ng/mL which dramatically dropped to less than 100 ng/mL following RAI. Forty-three months following treatment with RAI, she has experienced complete resolution of her symptoms and continues to maintain persistently low-thyroglobulin levels of less than 100 ng/mL. Conclusions. RAI is believed to reach peak efficacy within 6–12 months; however, little has been reported regarding the long-term duration of benefit. This case demonstrates that the benefits of RAI therapy may be enduring, even in patients with widely metastatic thyroid cancer. It suggests in clinically stable patients with declining thyroglobulin after treatment, that there may not be an immediate need for additional therapy as RAI treatment may provide lasting effects