Donna G

Great job Jamie! Bet you are a great teacher! Wish they let you show us your musical talent as well. Your child sounds like a sweety. Donna G http://health.discovery.com/ Click: Listen to podcasts

Sher you better fight that some of the money would go to lung cancer research. Here in Minnesota where the state won piles of money from the tobacco settlement, none of it is going to research. We are balancing the budget with the new "user fee" on cigarettes (heavens that we call it a tax)! The money from the tobacco settlement is building new roads. Donna G

Mark do you have this book? http://www.smallcelllungcancer-info.com ... lungcancer It is on SCLC . It says it lists clinics and doctors that specialize in SCLC. Hope you have been tolerating your treatments so far. Did you listen to my I Pod on the Discovery web site. You can hear my voice and see that Jay did marry a "girl" from Boston for sure. Donna G

Malou, I am so sorry. He had only been home 10 days. Please except my prayers for you and the family during this most difficult time. Donna G

Hi and welcome spaciejane. You did not mention where you are. How long it takes sometimes depends what country or state you are in. I am glad you Dad's doctor is screening him The sad truth is that there are no early symtoms generally for lung cancer. It is the only major cancer that there is no accepted screening done for and generally because of this it is found late. In my on case my tumor was in a spot pressing on a nerve so I had pain. Generally pain is a late symtom. The reason the CT is not used as a screening tool is because it picks up swollen lymph nodes etc that are not cancer so it must be either watched and done again in a few months to compare or it must be biopsied to know for sure. Please keep us posted how your Dad's tests come out. Donna G

Karin how wonderful they found them and a plan to take care of them! When do they start chemo? Let us know how all goes. Donna G

I found it! I still do sound like a true Bostonian. I can hear my accent! Now I want to "hear" your stories. Donna G

Nonsmoking Men, Women Face Same Lung Cancer Death Risk By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter on 05/16/2006 TUESDAY, May 16 (HealthDay News) -- The death from lung cancer earlier this year of Dana Reeve, widow of actor Christopher Reeve, brought the plight of nonsmokers who get the killer disease into public view. The fact is, one in every five people diagnosed with lung cancer has never touched a cigarette. But a new study finds that, among people who have never smoked, deaths from lung cancer are no higher in women than they are in men. "Contrary to conventional wisdom, we did not find that women who never smoked were more likely to get lung cancer than their male counterparts," said lead author Dr. Michael Thun, vice president of epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society. The report appears in the May 17 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. One of the sources of that misperception is that doctors think they see more women with lung cancer who have never smoked than men, Thun said. But that's probably due to the fact that older females who never smoked outnumber males by nearly three to one. "There are more women over the age of 60 who have never smoked. There are over 16 million women in that category, and about 6.5 million men," Thun said. In their study, Thun and his colleagues collected data on 940,000 adults who had never smoked. These people had participated in two American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study groups. The researchers looked at death rates from lung cancer in these patients. They found that lung cancer death rates were similar for men and women. For reasons that remain unclear, they also found that lung cancer death rates were higher in nonsmoking black women than in white women. "However, we found no evidence that the death rate from lung cancer was changing among people who never smoked from the time of the first study, in 1959, to now," Thun said. Cancer death rates among men who had never smoked were 17.1 per 100,000 person years, and 14.7 per 100,000 for never-smoking women. Black women who had never smoked had a death rate that was 43 percent higher than that of white women with a similar history. Overall, Thun said, "these findings are reassuring. They recognize that most lung cancer comes from smoking. Even though lung cancer among nonsmokers is uncommon, lung cancer in general gets shortchanged in terms of research dollars. It is not funded commensurate to its burden in suffering and death," he said. Thun said that the reason lung cancer research is underfunded is because many believe it's "the patient's fault" if he or she gets lung cancer. "Lung cancer doesn't have an advocacy group like breast and prostate cancer, because survival is typically short, and because people who get lung cancer are blamed for it being their own fault," he said. "In reality, it's the cigarette companies' fault," he added. One expert agrees that more research is needed in preventing and treating lung cancer. "We need to come up with a lung cancer screening program," said Dr. Scott Swanson, chief of thoracic surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York City. "Physicians need to be aggressive about thinking about lung cancer even among nonsmokers," he added. "Breast cancer is funded at a four-to-one level to lung cancer by the National Cancer Institute, even though lung cancer kills four times more people than breast cancer," Swanson said. "We need to get more funding." He noted that, too often, lung cancer is diagnosed far too late for treatment to be effective. "There is no program to find it until someone is coughing up blood or has pain," he said. "We need to be screening, and we need to be doing the research." The good news is that when lung cancer is diagnosed early, it has an 80 percent cure rate, Swanson said. "It's like other cancers -- we just have to find it early."

Heard this, Lori Monroe a Stage IV Lung 3 yr Lung Cancer Survivor. Click on her picture and look and listen. Great Story! http://health.discovery.com/convergence ... llery.html Donna G

See the doctor as you plan. Perhaps stess from the diagnosis and treatment could be a leading contributor and of course worrying about it brings on more-stress. You are young , perhaps you need rehabilitation. Maybe you need daily exercise, a counsellor, and an antidepressent pill. I hope this is your problem because you can find help. Donna G

The discovery channel emailed me this morning! Then Will Johnson called and asked if they could tape me over the phone at 10:15. Well I just finished doing that and Will told me it would be on a link at the Discovery Health web site in just a couple of days! Now you will know for sure that I was born in Boston when you here my accent! Donna G

Hi Tina. I hope you can bring a message of hope and comfort to your MIL. Welcome Donna G

I was just on the discovery web site and saw "Are you a Cancer Survivor" , send us your story. You can send a video or an email to Survivorstories@discovery.com I copied and pasted the one I had put in our ribbon "My Story". Wish all of us would do that then maybe we would get a program that showed us and how important it is for research and early detection with lung cancer! Donna G

Glad to hear you are doing well. Are you coming back for a party on the 2 year past surgery date? We love to celebrate those survival parties. Donna G

Welcome Karin. Glad you found us. Did your Dad have any symptoms that lead to the diagnosis? You said it was near his spine. Please keep us posted on how he is doing. I had to have chemo and radiation to make my tumor operable so sometimes that works out. Again, welcome. Donna G

Welcome Deanne. It is such a great help to have a loved one to travel this journey with. In the beginning, I believe, many of us are so overwhelmed we get numb and it is so hard to even listen and "hear" what we are being told. We need all the help and support we can get. Another set of ears at an appointment , someone who listens to our grief of having lost our health, listens to our fears , concerns. It is such a blessing to have someone with us who cares. Keep us posted on how things are going. Donna G

Thanks for the update. Great news. Keep it coming. Donna G.

Ben , Welcome. Glad you are here. I imagine like all of us, you are feeling overwhelmed with all that has been going on. Big hug ((((((((((Ben))))))))))))). Please keep us posted on how you are doing. Donna G

Rich I am so happy for you. We have been on this journey dealing with lung cancer but who knows we may have been on Rt. 24 and Rt.25 going to the Cape also! I hope that I get back to the Bay State and we get to celebrate more years of survival! Donna G

Wow Theresa! I love it! Donna G

Wonderful news. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh to hear the sound of NED! Donna G

Great News! Teri I am so happy for you that you can celebrate 4 years of survival and counting and your Mom is out 1 year. Together you make 5 years. Yippee! Party time. Thanks for sharing . Donna G

Hi Anna. Welcome. Hope we can help. Keep us posted. Donna G

Welcome. Boy you have had too much going on this year! I am somewhat confused. Reading your post I get the idea that all of these are unrelated ( as the sarcoma, the ovary, the lung, the bowel obstruction ) Why do they say you are Stage IV? Did they find lung cancer somewhere else in your body? Usually they do not do surgery with Stage IV yet you say you had 2 thorocotomies. Keep us posted. Donna G

That is good news. Lets start the cheers FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT! Many have survived,many will survive and we want many more to do so! Keep us posted. Donna G