Check out the Upstate Women's Show - Featuring Lung Cancer Survivor, Keish Kirkland of WYFF 4

Keish Kirkland, weather forecaster at NBC's WYFF Channel 4, will share her story - "Living with a Life Altering Diagnosis...Lung Cancer."

See her at the Upstate Women's Show
Friday, August 28th at 11 am on the Entertainment Stage at Greenville's Carolina First Center

ASCO: The August Bulletin from Cancer.Net

Check out the August Bulletine from Cancer.Net - trusted cancer information from the American Society of Clinical Oncology

THIS MONTH ON CANCER.NET: Olympic swimmer Eric Shanteau and ASCO leaders visit Wall Street, going back to school and work after cancer, where to turn for questions on clinical trials, and much more!

WYFF4 reports: Upstate University To Impose Fines On Smokers

Lander University Imposes Fines On Student, Faculty Smokers

GREENWOOD, S.C. -- Lander University is preparing to give added emphasis to its status as the first state college or university in South Carolina to ban the use of tobacco products on its campus, a prohibition that was introduced with the start of the fall semester in 2007.

Lander president Daniel Ball accepted the recommendations of a committee that he appointed to come up with a strategy for introducing the tobacco-free policy to newcomers, and reminding returning students, faculty and staff that the use of tobacco is not allowed anywhere on Lander property. The ban includes campus parking lots and the university’s off-campus student housing facilities. The smoking ban also applies to visitors.

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Jacksonville.com reports: Times-Union reporter free to fly again after cancer fight

After 8 weeks of chemotheropy, tests come back cancer free.
By Jessie-Lynne Kerr

The news from the doctors last week was very positive - the latest PET/CAT scan showed no return of the cancer that was discovered in my lungs March 10.

They even said I could attempt to return to a somewhat normal, at least for me, way of life and try the things that got put on hold while I fought the cancer.

The combination of aggressive chemotherapy and twice-a-day radiation killed the tumors after just eight weeks. Another week of chemo followed, depleting my white blood cell count and necessitating shots of Neupogen to stimulate the bone marrow to make more.

Most of June was spent getting daily low-dose radiation to the brain, since small-cell lung cancer, the type I have, has a tendency to return with a vengeance and go to the brain.

It was painless, but it took its toll in other ways.

My eyebrows now must be deftly drawn and brushed on each morning with the latest from Maybelline.

And the radiation killed parts of the stubble that had begun to reforest my bald scalp. At first it looked as if it continued to grow in that pattern, I would be sporting a Mohawk.
But soon, some of that melted away, too. Now it is just a circular patch of very dark stubble on the very crown of my head, and a rather ugly misshapen patch below. And I can't blame it on being a rookie at football camp.

Didn't someone famous once say that a woman's crowning glory was her hair?

It is hard to imagine that now in my case.

I faced reality and took care of some necessary stuff we don't like to talk about because it means we are confronting our own mortality. I have paid for my cremation and for the interment of my ashes at the memorial garden at church. A lawyer prepared my will, designation of health surrogate, living will and all that legal stuff to spare my son the tasks.
Cleared to go on my own way for three months without any further treatment, except for a monthly irrigation of the port in my chest to facilitate getting chemo, I am to call the radiologist if I experience any bone pain, seizures or cough up bloody mucous.

He told me it could be up to three months before the overwhelming fatigue I am experiencing eases up. My esophagus, which was burned by the radiation, is healing nicely and I am not too worried about the 20 pounds or so that I've lost due to a poor appetite because I was (and still am) overweight. But for those of you trying to lose some weight, find another way.

My lung doctor told me I was doing great but when I told him of my anxiety waiting to get the results of the latest scan, he told me that is called "scanxiety." I had a tendency to think the worst whenever a felt a twinge that seemed somehow different.

After all this, you would think I'd be due a vacation, right?

Well I have one planned. In February I bought a round-trip airline ticket to New York to attend a Hall of Fame induction ceremony at my high school on Staten Island. I had to cancel because of the lung cancer.

But now I have been cleared to fly again and I plan to go to New York the first week of October and visit a cousin. We plan to drive up to her cabin in the Adirondacks for a few days and take in Mother Nature's repainting of the landscape.

Life - now - is good. And with only a 20 percent chance I'll be here in five years, every moment is too precious to waste.

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USA Today reports: Surgeon general pick 'would do anything to heal'

President Obama on Monday nominated for surgeon general an influential rural family physician who has spent the past two decades caring for a shrimping community along the Gulf Coast.

Obama said Regina Benjamin understands the needs of the poor and uninsured and is a tireless promoter of wellness programs, making her qualified to be America's advocate during health care reforms.

Benjamin founded her non-profit clinic in 1990 for a diverse community of 2,500 near her home in Bayou La Batre, Ala., and had to rebuild it three times. It was destroyed twice by hurricanes and once by fire. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Obama said, she mortgaged her own house for the reconstruction and told the pharmacy to send her patients' bills to her when they couldn't afford their medicine.

"And for all that she's seen and overcome, she represents what's best about health care: doctors and nurses who give and care and sacrifice for the sake of their patients, those Americans who would do anything to heal a fellow citizen," Obama said. "When people couldn't pay, she didn't charge them. When the clinic wasn't making money, she didn't take a salary for herself."

Benjamin, 51, became the first African-American woman to be named to the American Medical Association's board of trustees in 1995 and last year received one of the MacArthur Foundation's $500,000 "genius grants." After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Medicine in 1984, she worked in Alabama as part of her obligation to the National Health Service Corps, a Department of Health and Human Services program that places physicians in underserved communities in exchange for tuition reimbursement.

Public health also has become "very personal" to her.

"My father died of diabetes and hypertension. My older brother and only sibling died at age 44 of HIV-related illness. My mother died of lung cancer because as a young girl, she wanted to smoke, just like her twin brother. My uncle Buddy, my mother's twin, is at home right now on oxygen struggling for each breath because of the years of smoking."

Those preventable diseases, she said, were why her family wasn't present with her at the nomination announcement: "While I cannot change my family's past, I can be a voice in the movement to improve our nation's health care and a nation's health for the future."

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