Friday, May 30, 2008

Lung cancer patients fight stigma

From Reuters (Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "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.

Read entire article here.

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