making noise for lung cancer

(originally published in Caregivingly Yours, June 10, 2012)

Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer in America … this one reoccurring fact kept leaping out of the screen as I researched myths and facts about lung cancer.

Yet despite claiming more lives than any other cancer, lung cancer receives comparatively little research funding or even attention.

Lung cancer kills more women each year than breast, ovarian, and uterine cancers combined. But unless you live under a rock how can you miss the shelves of pink product packaging during breast cancer awareness month.

The American Cancer Society’s defensiveness over their silence and underfunding of lung cancer only seems to add to the incongruity.

Is it the stigma of smoking? … anyone even non-smokers can develop lung cancer. Lung cancer in ‘never-smokers’ is now considered the 6th most common cause of cancer deaths in the United States.

Firefighters and emergency responders are at increased risk of lung cancer. 


Sitting in traffic puts you at risk. World Health Organization reports that "diesel exhaust IS a cause of lung cancer" and gasoline exhaust is "probably carcinogenic to humans."

Is it an age thing? … lung cancer can strike people of any age including children.

So why is lung cancer overlooked and underfunded? … too much whistling past the graveyard and too little research  … or are too many advocates simply silenced by the low survival rate?

Our family is one of almost a quarter of a million families that will receive a lung cancer diagnosis this year.

160,000 Americans will die this year of lung cancer.

Lung Cancer Awareness (1 min 48 sec)

It’s time “to drag lung cancer out of the shadows and focus public attention on this cruel and unrelenting killer”  Leaders of the Lung Cancer Free World

by Patrick Leer

Dr. Troy Moritz, DO

To paraphrase the most interesting man in the world "I don't always have surgery, but when I do, I prefer Troy Moritz, DO. Stay healthy, my friends."

Previously in this journal I have written about my successful lung cancer surgery and recovery. Yet to call it mine is to leave out the major player in the story, the thoracic surgeon Troy A. Moritz, DO, PinnacleHealth Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery.

What impressed me the most about this man were his people skills. He took the time to know me before he cut which I believe better enabled me to return to who I was by using minimally invasive procedures.

Surgery is scary and maybe more so to those in the waiting room because the unknown is even scarier. Dr. Moritz made the time when I was unconsciously oblivious to keep our daughter more than informed almost feeling involved. While I remember nothing, she got to see pictures of his hand in my lung. J

Enough of me, how about I let you hear and see him speak for himself in his 2 minute You Tube video:

Patrick Leer

BLOGS:

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

(originally posted in Caregivingly Yours June 3, 2012)

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