Cancer information

Cancer information courtesy of WaterOz Mineral Supplements

Just as it is seemingly overwhelming to discover cancer in your life, in yourself, a loved one, a respected coworker or employer, there is an overwhelming amount of "cancer information" on the web. When my best friend of twenty-nine years informed me she had invasive endometrial adinocarcinoma (deadly uterine cancer), I started searching for cancer information on the Internet. Some of the more helpful sites, those which relay complex information and details in a way we common folk can understand it and those which offer emotional support and techniques for coping with cancer.

Some very helpful cancer information can be found at Cancer.com’s “What you can do as a friend”. This very brief article is exactly what I needed at that time. I had lost a friend to a fatal illness a decade ago, and had at that time learned you don’t talk about certain topics with the newly diagnosed. That is, you don’t discuss other deaths by cancer with your friend who has just found out of her own possibly terminal illness. Along the same lines, a book among books is Pamela N. Brown’s Facing Cancer Together: How to Help Your Friend or Loved One.

For specific cancer information on specific cancers, such web sites as follows are most educational and supportive: Mesothelioma-net (which offers cancer information on the specific types of mesothelioma, treatment option discussions, and coping strategy suggestions); The Cancer Information Network (at cancerlinksusa.com); and, of course, The American Cancer Society (at cancer.org), which includes everything from prevention and early detection strategies and treatment decision tools to cancer information by type and research and statistics dating back almost 100 years.

At cancernews.com, you can find cancer information as well as directories pointing you to local cancer support groups (which you can also get at the Cancer Information Network). And numerous organizations have cancer hotlines—The National Cancer Institute (cancer.gov), Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization (y-me.org/hotline), the RA Bloch Cancer Foundation Cancer Hotline at 1-800-433-0464, and the Lung Cancer Alliance Hotline at 1-800-298-2436.

While I have not used them yet, there are also hundreds of online forums and communities, where you can post, read, and respond, and just as many set-ups where you can instant message with fellow cancer patients, cancer survivors, and cancer supporters. Important in all of these is the nature of sharing important cancer information, cancer woes, and cancer success stories. For as I understand it, hope and humor make the individual survive/outlive the disease as much as do positive thinking and plenty of company including friends and loved ones who do not let the person give up or give in.

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Additional resources on cancer information:

www.cancer.org The American Cancer Society is dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by...

www.cancerlinkusa.com A physician guided site for cancer patients, their families, and caregivers.

www.cancer-info.com Information and links for many types of cancer and treatments.

Cancer information in the news if available: