Rebecca was 28 when she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had never smoked a day in her life. Lung cancer diagnoses among women are up six-fold in 30 years. Any woman can get lung cancer, which is why it is so important to take action now. Thank you to the Leaders of the Lung Cancer-Free World for producing this video! This video is Copyright 2011 Leaders of the Lung Cancer-Free World.
Learn much more about women and lung cancer here and here.
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...for your EXCELLENT piece in the Los Angeles Times about lung cancer! Keep reading below... Kathryn Joosten Lung cancer a low-profile disease Lung cancer is the biggest killer among cancers in the U.S., but it gets relatively little research funding and attention. That should change, a survivor says. By Kathryn Joosten, Special to the Los Angeles Times November 7, 2011 Hands up! How many readers know someone with lung cancer? How many think breast cancer kills more women than lung cancer? How many readers think lung cancer means certain death? And how many people know that November, following right on the heels of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, is another disease awareness month — for lung cancer? Those of us with lung cancer are always disappointed at the dearth of information offered to the public about this disease compared with breast cancer, despite the fact that lung cancer is far more lethal, and a bigger killer to women than all the other cancers combined. We lung cancer survivors — and yes, there are a growing number of us — get irritated and disappointed when we see the oceans of pink on everything from football players to garden gloves. Some of us are plain irritated that lung cancer groups apparently can't get it together and organize the way that the breast cancer lobby has. The big loser in the cancer-funding race is lung cancer. It is the biggest cancer killer in the country, yet compared with other major cancers it receives the least National Cancer Institute funding on a per-death basis, as reported in 2008 in the New York Times: * Lung cancer (162,460 deaths): $1,630 * Colon cancer (55,170 deaths): $4,566 * Breast cancer (41,430 deaths): $13,452 * Pancreas (32,300 deaths): $2,297 * Prostate (27,350 deaths): $11,298 Several funding criteria are at play here. Funding research that has a bigger payback is a better choice, some believe, than pouring money into disease research that seems to have little return for the buck. Additionally, the prevailing view is that lung cancer is, for the most part, a terminal disease — and why throw good money away for a poor result? Not to mention that breast cancer is "sexier" and more well-known by the general public. The reality is that lung cancer research is progressing. We now know that lung cancers, like the people who get them, are all genetically different, and scientists are developing effective, targeted drugs that address the genome mutations responsible for specific types of lung cancers. This is allowing many more lung cancer survivors to pass the five-year survival mark. I am a two-time lung cancer survivor. My first was in 2001 and my second was in 2009, two completely different lung cancers, one on each side. I am the only "celebrity" to be public about my lung cancer. So far, I am a cancer survivor, but cancer will be with me for the rest of my life, be it as a nodule, tumor or cell someplace, or in my fears and anxieties. Therefore I've decided that I am "living with cancer." This disease continues to be hidden and only whispered about. It has a stigma because of the relationship to smoking — "you did it to yourself" — and therefore the belief that somehow it is something to be ashamed of and kept hidden. This in spite of the fact that most new lung cancers are in women who have never smoked or quit years ago. Until lung cancer can be addressed as fairly as the other big cancer killers, until the public and the victims stop blaming those with the disease, until lung cancer support groups can cease being unnecessarily protective of their individual efforts and grow beyond 5K walks; and until others in the public eye stop hiding and encouraging the stigma, we will continue to confine lung cancer to the back rows of attention and research. Joosten is an Emmy award-winning actress best known for her roles as the gossipy neighbor on ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and presidential secretary Mrs. Landingham on the NBC drama "The West Wing." A lung cancer survivor, she is involved in numerous lung cancer charity foundations. Before she began acting at age 42, she worked as a psychiatric nurse at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times 11/4/2011 Tweet chat with @forjoan , @rockscarlove , @bonniejaddario about lung cancer. 11/9 @ 9pm EST #rockscarchatRead NowOn Wednesday, November 9th at 9pm Eastern, friend of the lung cancer cause, @RockScarLove, will be hosting a live "Tweet Chat" about lung cancer in honor of Lung Cancer Awareness Month.
@BonnieJAddario and @forJoan will be fielding questions regarding the current state of testing, misconceptiosn about lung cancer and it stigma, and other questions pertaining to the #1 cancer killer in the world. So, mark your calendars! Grab a cup of coffee and your laptop or iPad and join us on November 9th at 9pm! Instructions to join the conversation... 1. Go to www.TweetChat.com 2. Sign in with your Twitter ID and password 3. Enter "rockscarchat" after the hashtag (#). 4. Join the conversation. Ask. Learn If you don't have a Twitter account, you can still follow the conversation at TweetChat.com. Simply enter "rockscarchat" after the hashtag (#) without signing in. http://www.rockscarlove.com http://www.thelungcancerfoundation.org http://www.forjoan.org Copyright 2011 Leaders of the Lung Cancer-Free World.
http://www.lungcancerleaders.org. Thank you to the Leaders of the Lung Cancer-Free World for producing this video. by Rob Densen, CEO of Tiller, LLC This article was originally published on The Huffington Post on November 2nd, 2011. In coming days, after NFL teams clean up and store their pink cleats for another year, politicians return their ribbons to desk drawers, and the flood of breast cancer stories subsides, another cancer will have its month in the sun: lung cancer. Only it won't be sunshine that will prevail, but dark and threatening cloud cover with the occasional deadly lightning strike.
November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month -- only you probably didn't know that. Here are some other things that polling indicates you probably didn't know: lung cancer will kill three times more of us this year than any other cancer, you have a 1 in 14 chance of getting lung cancer in your lifetime, just about half of us know someone who has or died of lung cancer, and close to 80 percent more women will die of lung cancer in 2011 than breast cancer. Why should you know about lung cancer? Precious little is said or written about it. You could call it benign neglect, except the impact is lethal. Lung cancer's relatively low profile is compounded by large amounts of misinformation, misperception, and stereotyping. The result is that the deadliest cancer killer of all runs rampant. I will be the first to admit that before my wife -- a life-long never smoker -- was diagnosed in early 2010 (FYI: women with lung cancer are twice as likely as men with the disease to have never smoked) lung cancer just wasn't on our radar screen. Now our family can't get it off our radar screen. And we're determined to get it on yours, somewhere. That's why we are today announcing Leaders of the Lung Cancer Free World℠ -- a nationwide communications campaign created with one goal in mind: to generate greater public awareness and understanding of lung cancer, the nation's number one cancer killer by a factor of three. Advertise, editorialize, promote, petition, Tweet, plead, cajole. We are prepared to do whatever it takes to get you to notice and engage. The Leaders campaign brings together a complementary portfolio of some of the nation's leading lung cancer organizations -- The CHEST Foundation of the American College of Chest Physicians, The National Lung Cancer Partnership and Uniting Against Lung Cancer -- who will coordinate on, support and be the financial beneficiaries of this effort. By taking a multi-front assault on lung cancer, we hope to:
As for our family, we don't question why lung cancer happens and why it happened to ours. What we don't understand is why we are not much further along in the fight against this awful disease. I say this honestly and without rancor, irony or self-pity: this campaign may come too late to help our family, but we hope it will help yours. Join us. There is so much you can do. Sign the petition encouraging the president and Congress to declare lung cancer a national health crisis. Donate to our partners. Encourage a loved one to stop smoking. Help us spread the word on Facebook and Twitter. Over the next five years, more than 1,000,000 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer. Together, we can help save many of them. It's time to fight back. As part of National Lung Cancer Awareness Month this November, Stanford physicians got together to create and share a message of hope and educate the public about this devastating disease. Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer in the U.S. and the world, claiming the lives of 1.3 million people worldwide each year. A heart-felt "Thank You" to the Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford Hospitals and Clinics, Liat Kobza, and Todd Holland for producing this EXCELLENT video.
Help spread the word during Lung Cancer Awareness Month! Pass this video along! Learn the facts! Such as: Lung cancer kills more people than breast, prostate, colon, liver, kidney, and melanoma cancers combined.
Fight the Stigma! Lung cancer matters, too. Nobody deserves it. And, you do not have to smoke to get it. It's time to deal with it beyond its connection to smoking. "If we took all the smokers in the world, only about 10% of them would ever develop lung cancer." - Dr. Bradley Lash, Lankenau Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA Join the fight! Find a Lung Cancer Walk in your area and participate. In Atlanta, there are two during November. Also, get your tickets now for our 5th Annual Dancing for Joan in February! (With emcee Nancy Grace of "Dancing with the Stars"!) We also have sponsorship opportunities available. Spread the word! Social media...e-mail...in person...whatever it takes! |
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