Category: Insight

The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship says you are a cancer survivor from your day of diagnosis through the rest of your life. Not everyone identifies personally with the term “survivor,” but the concept of survivorship is far-ranging and inclusive.

More than 20 years ago, Dr. Norman Anderson at the Robert Boisonneault Oncology Institute successfully treated a man whose metastatic melanoma had produced 23 brain lesions.

Smoking (including secondhand smoke and smokeless tobacco, sometimes called “chewing tobacco” or “snuff”) is the number one risk factor for getting head and neck cancer.

Cancer treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation involve travel to facilities. But what we do at home can amplify treatment’s benefits and decrease its side effects.

Some risk factors, like age, cannot be avoided, but limiting your exposure to other factors may lower your risk. The American Association for Cancer Research says these “preventable causes”
are responsible for “more than 40 percent of all cancers diagnosed and nearly half of all deaths from cancer in the United States.