Cancer Information

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 tapped into some of that cancer information. Here are 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.

Cancer and Careers.com’s “What You Can Do as a Friend” –This very brief piece is what I needed immediately. I had lost a friend to 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. This cancer information is most helpful from the start….

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 websites 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 (1-800-433-0464), and the Lung Cancer Alliance Toll-free Hotline (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—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—friends and loved ones who do not let the person give up or give in.