What's more educational than the mistakes of other people? That one way you could view lung cancer personal stories but there's also another one, one that serves the higher cause of proving to people how strong and brave some of us can be and how much we all can endure.
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Lung cancer personal stories usually touch most people because, being the most frequent cancer form and the deadliest of them all, we're all bound to have had at least a friend, a relative or just an acquaintance that has either struggled with it or has died from lung cancer. This brings it closer to our own experience and the frighting thing about lung cancer is that we are all vulnerable to it, especially if we are smokers, but also just by being exposed to smoke and pollution every day.



Looking at some of the lung cancer personal stories out there,  you'll find out people that have had it were living no more of a worse lifestyle than yourself.Just a handful of poor choices can weigh a lot and sometimes genetic predisposition is all that necessary to develop this disease.

Personal stories can make you better understand the risk factors involved in getting lung cancer as well as the impact such a disease can have on your life. There are many online sources for this kind of stories and most of them are highly inspirational. None are actually tragic since if the patient would have died from it he wouldn't have been around anymore to tell his story. Cancerguide.org is just one example of the many websites that offer you lung cancer personal stories. Lungcanceronline.org or revolutionhealth.com also make great sources for lung cancer experiences. Sometimes these stories can tell you more about your own case than statistics. Lung cancer is a type of cancer that can vary a lot from individual to individual with many variables involved. Therefore, just by knowing your cancer's stage and looking at the survival rates for that stage you can draw incorrect conclusion whereas by reading the story of a person that has gone through a similar experience you can better know what to expect for yourself.



Many of these stories now the serve the cause of fighting against smoking and others promote different cancer treatments. Either way, the survivors have realized that they have a responsibility to help others prevent what they had to go through. Most of them take a stand and don't just go on with their lives after cancer as if nothing had happened. Telling their story is also a good therapy for the survivors, giving them the chance to better comprehend what they had overcome and to take pride in this as well as admit to their mistakes and to try and prevent others from repeating their mistakes.

The Free to Breathe events are part of a nationwide effort to promote public awareness on the subject of  lung cancer and to also raise funds for researching new treatments and for allowing access to low-income families to lung cancer examinations. These events have a great power to bring people together and empower them in the fight against lung cancer and its most dangerous ally, namely smoking. Locations for Free to Breath Events are spread throughout USA and starting this year a new Free to Breathe event will be inaugurated in Denver.
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This series of events is an initiative of the National Lung Cancer Partnership, which is an lung cancer advocacy organization though which physicians, researchers, survivors and advocates come together to improve awareness on the subject, to offer support to lung cancer patients and to raise funds for more progress in researching new treatments for lung cancer.



The Denver lung cancer walk is the perfect example of a successful method of raising both awareness and funds for research. This event is scheduled to take place on the 21st of August 2010 in the Stapleton Central Park. On that same day, at 8 am registration starts and at 9 am the rally should begin after proper stretching done under an instructors supervision.

In order to reserve a place you have to pay 20$ for online registrations before August 18, 23$ for registering through mail before August 16 and 25$ for registration on the day of the race.This event is bound to bring a lot of people together and it will probably be the first in a long line of such events in the city of Denver. The Denver lung cancer walk is 5 kilometers long and no time limit is imposed on the participants. This inaugural Free to Breathe event is not only aimed at raising funds and awareness but also at making lung cancer patients feel that they are not alone in their struggle and that they have a responsibility to make sure other people will learn from their mistakes, whether those were smoking, an unhealthy lifestyle or a poor monitoring of their health.



The event was initiated by the Winchell family to honor and commemorate Duke Colorosa. All the money raised will go into the research activities of The National Lung Cancer Partnership, into education an into other awareness programs so people of all ages and conditions should make a virtually effortless contribution by joining the rally. Even if you have had no experience whatsoever with lung cancer in the past you can still show your support and contribute to the general cause of people becoming more aware about their health and that of those around them. Lung cancer is a highly preventable form of cancer so awareness can have a great impact on reducing lung cancer incidence around the world.

Lung cancer is the deadliest form of cancer and for many it's very hard to understand how people fail to become aware of its risks and, implicitly, of the risk of smoking. Before the boom of the tobacco industry lung cancer was just a regular form of cancer, far from having leading death rates but today it accounts for more deaths that prostate, colon and breast cancer put together. This is very alarming and though measures are taken to educate people into realizing the dangers of smoking, these educational campaigns seem to work only in developing countries.
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However, progress is being made in USA as well through appealing to the public's sensitivity and encouraging people to come together and keep themselves and their loved ones safe from this disease. It's easy to argue that smoking is not guaranteed to lead to lung cancer as about 10% of the patients have never smoked in their lives but it would be ridiculous to cling to this as there's still a significant 90% of people that are affected by the disease, whether by smoking or by inhaling second hand smoke. Smoking remains an important risk factor and people shouldn't dismiss its link to lung cancer just because there are a lot more smokers than people with lung cancer.



Even so, the already worldwide known lung cancer ribbon, the logo for the fight against cancer, does not solely represent the fight against smoking but tends to a higher cause, namely that of stimulating solidarity among people, of making people feel responsible for their health and that of those around them and of empowering people in their struggle to overcome the cancer. Ribbons are symbols for the unity people oppose to all cancers and the white/clear one represents lung cancer. This ribbon, as delicate as it may seem, has the power to inspire people and to reassure them that they can have all the support they need in their struggle and that they are not alone. These ribbons can be given as a gift or simply passed around. The aim is to make people take a moment to think about their actions before it's too late. Lung cancer can be prevented through a healthy lifestyle but if we're not aware of this in order to prevent it chances are that if we will ever be diagnosed with lung cancer it will be to late to have a big chance of survival as lung cancer only shows symptoms in its advanced stages and sometimes the symtpoms can even appear first from a secondary, metastatic tumor.



Without it being a marketing strategy, lung cancer awareness ribbons have been turned into many very popular and beautiful items like jewelry, key chains and pins so it can make a really great gift. There are even more personalized items or accessories you can purchase, from T-shirts with the ribbon on them and affirming your support for a family member. or even bracelets with your name and the ribbon attached. Oddly enough, such objects can really touch people and trigger authentic awareness on the subject. The ribbon itself also makes a very powerful statement and it's incredible how people of all cultures, from the whole world and speaking different languages can struck a chord in each other just by wearing the ribbon. Such things should never be underestimated and wearing it yourself might make you think twice before reaching for another cigarette.

No matter how often you read and hear this it is still startling to know that more than one in four of all diagnosed cancers involve the lung, and that lung cancer remains the most common cancer-related cause of death among Americans. For last year, 2009, almost 160,000 lung cancer deaths were expected, outnumbering deaths from breast, prostate and colon cancers all together.
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What makes it even more shocking is that it is probably also one of the most easily preventable forms of cancer out there. Lung cancer usually develops over a period of many years, and if detected at an early enough stage can be eliminated by a variety of treatments. So if you are a smoker and have other risk factors in your life make sure you go in for a periodical check of your lungs. And since more and more research shows you don't have to have ever put a cigarette in your mouth to develop lung cancer everybody should include an x-ray of the lungs in their annual check up.



Treatment depends on the stage of the cancer and on the health condition of the patient. Surgery is the primary treatment for patients with early-stage cancer, where the cancer is localized, and who are in good general health. Surgery is the most effective treatment as it can remove the tumor entirely and it can even be used in metastasis if the cancerous cells are close together.

However, in the majority of cases the patient is usually not fit for surgery or it is not possible to remove the entire tumor if it has become invasive and because of its size or location. A number adjuvant treatments are available and can shrink a tumor so that it may be more easily removed. In some cases this alternative treatment can completely destroy a lung cancer. Such available options are chemotherapy and radiation therapy. We will take a look at the last one, more difficult to understand and administer.

Radiation therapy, also called radiotherapy acts as a mechanism to deliver high-energy beams of x-rays that act as a killer for rapidly dividing cells like those that are cancerous but some of the healthy ones as well. Radiotherapy can have many different uses in lung cancer and it can even be a primary treatment. Most of the times it is used before surgery to shrink the tumor or after surgery to make sure that no remaining cancerous cells will increase risks of relapse. Radiotherapy can also alleviate side-effects of other types of treatment, though it has some of its own too. In treating cancer it's all a matter of weighing between two harms and choosing the least harmful or course. Radiation therapy is also used when the cancer becomes invasive and has spread to the brain or other areas of the body.



Most often, radiation therapy is delivered in the form of the external beam technique. This aims a beam of x-rays directly at the tumor and aggressively acts to destroy the cancerous cells. Treatment is given in a series of sessions usually throughout a period of over six weeks. For more details and a better understanding of how this treatment works you should ask your oncologist. This type of treatment is also very differentially applied to each patient so you might not get accurate information just by reading about it and asking around.

Lung cancer is responsible for a large number of deaths annually but nobody actually knows the effects and causes of this disease which has been so little spoken about and many people even ignore the real causes of the disease and how it can get to affect your life and in the end to kill you . Lung cancer has a mortality rate increasingly big especially in the last ten years when from the total patients diagnosed with lung cancer, circa 1,3 millions each year, more that 80 or even 90 per cent of them day per year and the numbers can be more and more big each year .
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Lung cancer diagnosis is the main problem for the severe number of deaths due to the fact that the disease is not detected when it should be . There are many people who do not know that there are simple things that can cause cancer and the main cause for lung cancer is one that the people choose it because they want so . When people chose to smoke, they actually chose the a high risk for developing lung cancer .



They do not take in consideration this risk and they always say it should not happen to them . Most of the earliest and first symptoms of lung cancer are not taken in consideration and people do not always go to the doctor because if they experience a cough they should believe it is a seasonal flu and they do not bother to go to the doctor and check to see if there is really that or something else . The majority of patients reach the doctor when they have already experienced repeated infections the majority have had pneumonia, they had persistent  cough and they even coughed up blood and they fell extremely painful pains in chest .

So they are diagnosed with advanced stages of lung cancer such as stage 3 or 4 when the cancer stops being localized just in lungs, they have also reached the lymph nodes or from the area nearby or also on the same part of the body but nodes which were found at a certain distance away from the tumors place . In this stages the cancer has even spread to other parts and organs of the body which are being infected and more and more complications start to appear and the normal functions of different vital organs are being affected and the organism of the patient does not react as it should be .



Lung cancer diagnosis is tough and gives the patient, usually, poor survival rates because it is already advanced and the treatments are not so plenty and also they are not so efficient . Surgery is possible only if the place where the tumors are localized can afford such an intervention and radiation therapy and chemotherapy do not always assure the wanted results because they are aggressive and they can cause many side effects which can make things even harder .

Not many people are informed about what lung cancer means and it has not given many attention to this kind of cancer by the mass media or the public although is one of the roughest disease of our generations that kills many people each year and more and more people are being diagnosed with this kind of illness
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It is not know that the majority of the people which are diagnosed with lung cancer disease meaning a percentage of over 80 per cent of the total number actually die each year because the disease is too rough and they can not resist it . Of course, this type of cancer that kills more people than many other more known and about which the mass media usually talks, has some causes which are the external factors of the cancer and also there are causes which can vary from person to person, from organism to organism and even from cancer to cancer because they can have different evolutions

The external facts are about the prognosis that the doctors give and also about the staging of the disease . If people want to have information about lung cancer, they should try to ask the doctors to explain them the facts about the disease and its characteristic, progression, survival rates, prevention, causes, effects, complications or start to read on the internet, to search for book which have related articles, chapters about this matter .

The majority of the people when are diagnosed with lung cancer usually are in advanced stages when the things get more complicated and this sort of thing happens especially because the symptoms in early stages many times do no show up or they are easily confounded with a simple flu and they do not pay any attention to it . But as the time passes and it starts to progress the cancer starts to spread towards the lymph nodes and many other parts and implicit organs of the body and it is no longer just local it become in some way general at the level of the organism .

As things get more advanced there appear all sorts of complications which make the doctors’ tasks more difficult because the treatment that can be applied is no longer such easily because surgery can interfere only when the tumor is localized in a place where the intervention is possible, chemotherapy and radiation therapy may not give proper results and can also have side effects .

The survival rate of patients in advanced stages of lung cancer are no longer very optimistic and they can not even be in the five year life expectancy that the doctors predict the moment when the cancer is discovered and diagnosed . Information about lung cancer is extremely much and it is essential to know it in order to be able to understand the effects and the cause of the disease and to understand that it can be pretty simple avoided if you know the prevention means .

Lung cancer can have many causes but one of them is responsible for the majority cases diagnosed with this disease . Smoking is one of the most common cause of lung cancer . Statistics points out that smokers have a 50% or even 100% greater chance to have lung cancer than the non-smokers . 90% of the lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking and what is more important is that not only smokers are affected but also passive smokers , people who inhalate the smoke, can develop this disease .

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For example , men who smoke develop a lifetime risk of 17.2% and women a risk of 11.6% and for non-smokers men have a lifetime risk of lung cancer of 1.3% and women of 1.4% . Even if statistic points out this numbers , the number of smokers does not come down . There is a tight connection between the number of cigarettes smoked per day by a person and the risk of getting lung cancer and also another major factor represents the period of  time that a person has been smoking .

Lung cancer may have other causes such as : radon gas , asbestos , viruses , particulate matter but none of this has registered so many infected person with lung cancer such as smoking . It is a very rough disease because 85% of the discovered cased die within the first 5 years . This number is so big because lung cancer is really hard to detect in early stages  . Most of the patients are diagnosed with advanced levels of cancer .

The patients present besides  , the lung cancer symptoms  which has to do  with the effects of the tumors , other effects which are linked with the metastatic tumors in other parts of their bodies . Sometimes you can have  fluid in the lungs and this has another effect on body because cancer can spread to other parts of the body and cells which are normal can become infected with carcinogens.

There can be : disturbances of hormones , blood or other systems can be harmed  and apart from these can appear effects due to the treatment applied , or to the type of cancer or whether the lung cancer is metastatic or not .  Following these effects , the long term effects will start to appear . This means that new health problems will develop such as : liver , brains and bone cancer .

Another serious complication can be heart . Because of the lack of oxygen , the level of oxygen in blood drop and are very low which leads to shortness of breath again , then  there is the risk of a great enlargement of the right side of the heart and it can lead to a  possible  heart failure which is called by doctors as pulmonary hypertension. It is easy to see that even if causes are not so many , the effects of lung cancer on patient’s body are multiple and they also can cause another kind of affections that can be as deadly as the lung cancer and that reduces the survival rate even more .

Lung cancer is the most common form of cancer that kills annually 1.18 million people and over 90% of the total cases registered are caused by smoking . Smokers have a greater chance to develop this disease than non-smokers ; the risk to develop this lung affection  is almost double among the smokers . What is even more important is that not only smokers are affected by lung cancer but also the people that inhale the smoke named passive-smokers .

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There is a tight connection between the number of cigarettes smoked per day by a person and the risk of getting lung cancer and also another major factor represents the period of  time that a person has been smoking .Lung cancer may have other causes such as : radon gas , asbestos , viruses , particulate matter but none of this has registered so many infected person with lung cancer such as smoking . Even more , only 10 or extremely rarely 15% of the discovered cases are non-smokers .

It is a very rough disease because 85% of the discovered cased die within the first 5 years . This number is so big because lung cancer is really hard to detect in early stages  . Most of the patients are diagnosed with advanced levels of cancer . The majority of patients who develop the lung cancer are about fifty or sixty  years old and they have a large history of smoking .

Statistically, eight out of ten diagnosed cases with lung cancer occur in people over sixty years old . The type of treatment that can be applied to every patient depends very much on several factors : the type of lung cancer , the stage of cancer , the way the cells grow , the size of the tumor , where it is placed and the way other parts of the body have been affected .

The treatment for lung cancer can include a combination of various types of treatment such as : surgery , radiation therapy, chemotherapy or cryosurgery , pain medicines and even oxygen delivery . Another  solution which is accepted and recommend by doctors is taking nutritional supplements based on amino acids but not only them .

Although there treatments that could improve the quality of patient’s life or in some cases even cure him , the survival rate is very small : the majority of patients are given maximum 5 years of life since they have been diagnosed and only 5 or 10 % out of them actually mange to survive . This disease can also have many complications that can affect important vital organs such as : liver , adrenal glands , brain , bones and also the heart .

As time goes by and if treatment is not applied or it is applied wrong or it is not suitable for the patient , it will soon start disturbance in vision , low level of oxygen in blood and also because of the lack of oxygen there is a high risk to get a serious heart affection that can even cause death . It is extremely important to take care of health and to prevent as long as possible the risk to develop such sort of disease because the lung affection is very hard to cure and also because the side effect that appear in time due to it.

Nowadays , the number of cases per year is about 1,35 and the number of deaths is near 1,18 million .During the last few years , cancer has been one of main illness that caused so many deaths all over the world and lung cancer has been one of the most common cancer in the world and over 90% of the total cases registered are caused by smoking . Smokers have a greater chance to develop this disease than non-smokers ; the risk to develop this lung affection  is almost double among the smokers .

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What is even more important is that not only smokers are affected by lung cancer but also the people that inhale the smoke named passive-smokers .  This illness shows no mercy : 85% of the total cases diagnosed die within the first five years after the cancer has  been detected .  This higher mortality rate is due to two key major factors : lung cancer is hard to detect in early stages and when it’s discovered it has already affected other parts of their body and also because lungs are such an important life organ .



Because it is discovered in advanced stages , many times cancer leads to complications . Shortness in breath can lead to blockage of an airway because of the existence of tumor on a part of a lung that the air supplies . This is called atelectasis . But this is not the end . Another consequence of the blockage of an airway , are pneumonia , coughing , fever and chest pain . There is one other case if the tumor grows in the chest wall it produces a terrible chest pain . Sometimes you can have  fluid in the lungs and this has another effect on body because cancer can spread to other parts of the body and cells which are normal can become infected with carcinogens. This can also have many complications and can cause heart problems because there is a strong connection between lung cancer and fluid on  heart . The fluid which contains cancerous cells can gradually accumulate in the space between the lungs and the chest wall , which is called pleural effusions . If there are large amounts of fluid , this can lead to shortness of breath and the worst thing is that fluid can spread through out the lungs and this is translated in low level of oxygen . Because of the lack of oxygen , the level of oxygen in blood drop and are very low which leads to shortness of breath again , then  there is the risk of a great enlargement of the right side of the heart and it can lead to a  possible  heart failure which is called by doctors as pulmonary hypertension .



Lung cancer and fluid on heart is one of the most deadly complications that can occur if there appear delays in diagnosing the lung cancer of delays in treatment because the lung cancer easily spreads and can cause a terrible death .

Many people suffer from lung cancer. For some of them it is too late to be treated, but for others a cure may still be found. Although, not so many, there are survivors of this disease and we can read their stories, the lung cancer survivor testimonies.

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One of them begins with a call received by a person and the shock of knowing that someone you care about suffers. The person calling said that in March, 2000 he was diagnosed with a serious cancer in his right lung and told that he did not have more than 1 to 3 months to live. He was 73 years old and had decided to go to the hospital to die there. He was given chemo, but he couldn't stand it, so, he was put on hospice with morphine patches in case the pain got too great. Anyway, a friend heard about his condition and gave him a tape on flaxseed oil he received at a Bible conference. The patient listened to the tape and believed so much what he heard, that immediately began to use 6 tablespoons of flaxseed oil and cottage cheese a day. When he took the medical examination, the doctor asked him what, he had been doing, because the tumor he had in his right lung had not changed, but the tumor in his left lung, had completely disappeared without a trace.



Another lung cancer survivor testimony tells that a woman who had always breathing problems went to a usual examination, and after all the analysis had been done, the doctor told her that she had lung cancer. She was only 40 years old and had never smoked cigarettes. Luckily, she was at the first stage of the illness, so the doctor suggested surgery. Although, she wasn’t sure that the idea of operation is the right choice, she agreed to the surgery. The emotional and psychical impact on her and her husband was enormous. Despite the fact that only one lung was affected, the left one, and that she was diagnosed soon enough, so the cancer hasn’t spread in her body, she gave up fighting. Her husband, trying to change her way of thinking, took her to a discussion group, in witch she found the power to fight with the disease. She had the surgery two months later and the cancer was removed. She began feeling better immediately, and kept going to several medical examinations. After six months she was diagnosed with lung cancer at her right lung. She went trough surgery again and she survived the battle with lung cancer. She said that she survived only because she had her husband support all this time. He never left her alone and he never stopped fighting.