Lung cancer patients fight stigma
May 30th, 2008
I’m sorry. You don’t have breast cancer,” the oncologist told Charmaine Atkenson.The 48-year-old mother of two had something far worse — stage 4 lung cancer. It had spread to her spine, bursting the bone open. It was not only a sentence of death; it was a judgment.
Even though Atkenson never smoked, she felt almost ashamed. “I found that I never would even say what kind of cancer I had. Or I would always start by saying I never smoked and I never lived with a smoker,” she said in a telephone interview.
At 7:08 pm on September 3rd, 2010 Rubin Belitz said:
I lost my beloved husband to lung cancer 9 years ago. By the time he was diagnosed, he was Stage !V and it had spread to his spine and brain. He continued to live his life as before, practicing his music and even joined me as we spent two years learning Hebrew before our B’Nai Mitzvahs in February 5, 2000. He died three weeks later, on February 26th.