November: Lung Cancer Awareness

Breast Cancer Awareness preceeds Lung Cancer Awareness month by, well, one month. That gets the lung cancer people all bound up, because, really, lung cancer is the big killer. Breast cancer is out in front of us, and pleas to check for breast cancer are often treated like a joke: "Have a friend check!" But it's still the C word. People still die.

The trouble with lung cancer, well... there's a lot of trouble with lung cancer. You're so dependent on your lungs for the ability to do anything.

A simple thing to help prevent it, and to help your overall health, speed of healing after injury/surgery, etc, is to stop smoking. However, it's not the only answer.

Here's a great article discussing causes, stigma, and awareness of lung cancer.

An excerpt:
The National Lung Cancer Partnership blames the discrepancy on the stigma around smoking, the cause of 87 percent of lung cancer cases, and the sense that those who have developed the disease have brought it on themselves.

"Even among people who have never smoked and get this disease, if they share with somebody, 'Hey, you know, I have lung cancer,' the first question is, 'Well, did you smoke?' " says Regina Vidaver, executive director of the Madison, Wis.-based partnership. "It's such a judging question, and it's so difficult for people to bear when they're bearing a diagnosis of lung cancer."

Such judgments affect the amount of funding available for research, Vidaver says.

It's the second leading cause of death :/