Lung Cancer: ‘If You Breathe, You are Vulnerable’

We are thrilled and honored to feature one of the leading voices in the dad blogger community, Oren Miller of a Blogger and a Father. Oren founded the thriving Dad Bloggers Facebook group that helped inspire the creation of Dads 4 Change. Today, he shares information about his personal battle with cancer, and about what you can do to help fight the biggest killer in the world, lung cancer. — Carter

November is lung cancer awareness month, which is not something I knew or frankly cared about until May of this year, when I was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Since then, I’ve slowly started to get in touch with other lung cancer patients, many of them dedicated to promoting awareness for lung cancer, which with enough federal and private funding, can potentially change from being a death sentence to a chronic disease.

Unfortunately, maybe because of the stigma of lung cancer as a smokers’ disease (and by implication, a disease they deserve), or maybe because other groups, working for awareness for other types of cancer, have been so admirably successful, lung cancer research and organizations receive comparatively very little funding.

I don’t want to take anything away from people with other types of cancer and from groups working on their behalf, but I believe that if enough people knew the facts about lung cancer, we will have moved a step closer to more funding, which would mean a step closer to changing the statistics lung cancer patients face.

And here are the statistics:

• Lung cancer is the biggest killer in the world, and second in the US only to heart disease.
• Lung cancer accounts for more cancer-related deaths than breast, colorectal (colon), and prostate cancers combined.
• The five-year survival rate for lung cancer is 17 percent (compared to 96 percent, 88 percent and 65 percent for prostate, breast and colorectal cancer, respectively).
• And despite all that, lung cancer receives only 7 percent of cancer funding, and 0.1 percent of charitable donations.
• Lung cancer affects smokers, past smokers, and people who have never touched a cigarette. If you breathe, you are vulnerable.

Thanks for reading. Any help is welcome, whether it’s a donation to one of the many lung cancer organizations (like The Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation or many more you can find online), or even just a Facebook or a blog link to this post, or a tweet linking back to here.

I don’t know what’s in my future, but I do know that the future of lung cancer can be much better if and when people become aware of the facts. I’m remaining optimistic in both cases.

Thank you!

(And thanks to the blog Lung Cancer & Life Lessons. I got a lot of my information from this post.)