What should the statistics on the causes of death of women in developing regions say to us? That the world must live up to and build upon its successes to many ways.
At night I stared into the bathroom mirror, haunted by my own reflection. Was there an answer hidden in my eyes? What did my body know that my mind did not? Fear was taking hold in my bones, but by the week's end, I could feel its antidote springing up, silky and fragrant: faith.
As a cancer survivor, I have read numerous books and studies that purport a relationship between eating healthy, exercising regularly, reducing stress, getting sufficient sleep and lowering your risk of developing cancer or cancer recurrence.
Creating an online dating profile is awkward. Creating one when you have cancer? That is just another level of strange. And I almost did not go at the last second, when my nerves, and probably my grasp on reality, took hold of me.
A new report poses what should no longer be considered radical questions: Don't we have an obligation to do all that we can to prevent this disease -- to stop women (and increasingly men) from ever getting the disease?
Feeling angry can be beneficial to a person with cancer. It provides a means to vent and let off steam. After all, if anyone deserves to feel angry, it's someone with cancer. I believe it's even essential to feel anger in order to "process cancer" -- just not all the time.
"I saw what it was like to have a long life that was not a good life. I wanted to have as much quality of life as possible and didn't want to go to battle if there was no reason to go to battle."
It could not be more important that the federal government, through the direction of NCI, does more to fight childhood cancer.
Don't get me wrong. We must continue to support the goal of conquering cancer. But we must ask the National Cancer Institute to allocate more funding for prevention, and we must research better, more accurate diagnostics.
I am writing from the final throes of age 29, a narrowing corridor of weeks until I embark upon my 30s. But for some of us, 'survival' of this particular decade is jarringly literal. I am a cancer survivor.
World Cancer Day is an opportunity to act on an urgent moral imperative, to challenge the assumption that cancers must remain untreated in poor countries, just as was successfully done for HIV treatment more than a decade ago.
As a nurse-turned-patient, I can say with 150 percent confidence that being a caregiver involves some of the hardest work in the world. In fact, I can't overstate how difficult being a caregiver is. It is painstakingly difficult, physically, emotionally, socially, psychologically and, it must be said, financially.
I'm still absorbing the impact and distilling the multitude of details that became the focus of last year. I'm still growing my eyelashes back (nature is funny like that), and there are a couple of fun-filled appointments with my plastic surgeon in the near future.
You may have heard a lot recently about how a chemical that is formed from cooking meat is carcinogenic (cancer-causing), but recent studies show that the scope of what's bad for you in terms of meat is actually expanding.
It didn't really matter what we called ourselves though, because everyone knew what the names really meant. Everyone knew they really meant top, middle or bottom. We all knew exactly what was being done. We were being labeled.
Researchers found that nearly one-third of reports on large, randomized studies over-emphasize some benefits of therapy. In the majority of reports evaluated, the investigators found insufficient attention or discussion of treatment side effects.
