When Suzanne Lindley was diagnosed with colorectal cancer and informed she had six months to live, she and her family moved to the country, where she’d always dreamed of living.  Twelve years later, Suzanne leads an amazingly active life, traveling all around the country as a colorectal cancer advocate.

She credits her current quality of life to hitchhiking treatments, as well as to her CancerCare social worker Keith Lyons, who provided her with essential support and motivation through individual counseling and a support group.  “[Keith] said I could see cancer as a death sentence or I could celebrate the fact that I was very much alive and experience now,” Suzanne recalls.

The complete article is available here.

CancerCare offers online, telephone and face-to-face support groups that connect you with people who are in a similar situation. All support groups are free and led by professional oncology social workers who are experienced with cancer-related issues and concerns.

The guidebook was written by Vladimir Lange, M.D. to empower patients to seek a cure, rather than to accept defeat.  “New treatments, new drugs, and earlier diagnosis make survival much more likely than it was just a few years ago,” he notes.

CancerCare Lung Cancer Program Coordinator Win Boerkel calls Be a Survivor “one of the best lung cancer patient guides I’ve seen in my 13 years of working with lung cancer patients.”

In 2009, CancerCare collaborated with leading patient advocacy groups to launch The Lung Cancer Clinical Trial Call to Action campaign, designed to help patients and their families navigate the complicated landscape of researching and identifying clinical trials. Patients can call 1-800-698-0931 to be matched with a Clinical Trial Specialist who will guide them through the entire process.

The CancerCare Co-Payment Assistance Foundation offers up to $10,000 per year in co-payment assistance for lung cancer patients in their families.

To order the guide, call 1-888-LANGE-88 (888-526-4388), or print out and fax back the order form.

Learn more about our free services for lung cancer patients and visit our sister website, www.lungcancer.org.

The Lung Cancer Clinical Trial Call to Action campaign offers easy-to-use educational and trial-matching resources to help identify clinical trials that are appropriate to each patient’s diagnosis, stage and treatment history.

The campaign is a collaboration of six leading patient advocacy organizations, including CancerCare’s lungcancer.org, a leading resource for people affected by lung cancer.

Patients can access the Lung Cancer Clinical Trial Matching Service online by visiting www.lungcancer.org or by calling 1-800-698-0931, to speak directly with a clinical trial specialist who can guide them through the entire process.

Other organizations in the campaign include the Lung Cancer Alliance, Uniting Against Lung Cancer, National Lung Cancer Partnership, LUNGevity and the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago. EmergingMed is the service provider for the Lung Cancer Clinical Trials Matching Service.

The effort is being supported by several major pharmaceutical companies dedicated to the fight against lung cancer, including Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Amgen Inc., AstraZeneca, Genentech BioOncology, and Pfizer Oncology.