Hi Everyone,
I hope that I'm doing my part in making people aware that, yes, LC has its own month. I sent this editorial to all my local town newspapers in hopes that one of them (or all of them) will publish it. Please let me know what you think? Thanks!
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Lung Cancer: What About Us?
While Breast Cancer closes out on another successful October, that one month of the year that our world is painted, even saturated, in pink, Lung Cancer arrives in November barely noticed at all. Yes, Lung Cancer Awareness Month is celebrated each November.
I never gave the issue of lung cancer and what was being done for and about it much thought until this recent August when I was diagnosed as having it. I’ve learned so much about the disease and the lack of financial assistance our government funds for it. I’ve also learned about the stigma the general population has for it. It’s as though the disease doesn’t count in the area of compassion because most people believe that those who got the disease more likely than not did so by ignoring the warnings about cigarettes.
Here are just some of the harsh realities of lung cancer, some of which might surprise you. First of all, this disease kills more people than breast, prostrate, colon, liver, kidney and melanoma cancer combined. It kills twice as many women as breast cancer. It kills 439 people a day. Sixty percent of those diagnosed with Lung Cancer quit smoking decades ago or never smoked at all. The five year survival rate has never exceeded fifteen percent. Finally, Lung Cancer is severely underfunded: $23,754 per breast cancer deaths versus $1,414 per Lung Cancer death.
Having lost an aunt just last year to the disease after she had quit smoking for sixteen years, and then having been diagnosed recently at the age of forty eight, I think its important enough that I make people aware that, while cigarettes are still freely sold, very little is being done to help Lung Cancer survivors. We’re survivors until we no longer survive, but our chances of survival are slim at best.