What started my blogging about cancer is a small website I posted recently for the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. It’s just a few pages — no big investment in time either to post or to read — but it’s packed with great information. Specifically, it’s on Cancer and Women, with a focus on prevention.

Given my family, the lung cancer page in particular caught my attention. I’ve never smoked a day in my life, but for years I’ve had this nagging sense that I’m more susceptible to lung cancer than most. That’s because my maternal grandmother, who never smoked a day in her life, died of lung cancer, and now my mother, who never smoked a day in her life, has COPD (or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). As for me, I’ve always been, as my mother puts it, “a bit chesty.” In other words, I’m inclined towards things like asthma and bronchitis.

But that lung cancer seems more likely for me than say breast cancer has always been just a gut feeling. I’d never read anything to indicate that lung cancer might be hereditary — until I posted this site. And there, in a few short sentences, it says, more or less, that researchers have the same feeling I do. Of course they say it in a much more scientific way. “Researchers are finding that lung cancer in women is biologically different from lung cancer in men, according to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. There may be genetic and biologic differences that affect lung cancer development.”

Having said that, I don’t know what to do about it. Early detection of lung cancer is rare. I get mammograms routinely and don’t mind having colonoscopies either (though my family has no history of either breast or colon cancer). I’d be happy to be screened for lung cancer if there were as easy a way to do this. But there isn’t. I just hope some of the amazing researchers I’m so fortunate to work with discover something. And maybe I can help them by finding a clinical trial on lung cancer prevention to participate in.

The bottom line is I’m happy to help in whatever way possible to eradicate this horrible disease. And right now, one easy thing I can do is to spread the word. I can speak up by blogging. So I commend to you VICC’s Cancer & Women site.

“I’m one of the lucky ones.”

That’s how survivor Dwight Lewis begins his very moving recent column in the Tennessean. He wrote it because Brian Todd of the Metro Health Department reports that, “in spite of living in the information age, cancer is still a fearful, stigmatized disease in communities of color, and people simply don’t talk about it.”

I’m one of the lucky ones too — but for very different reasons. Not only have I never had cancer, I’m less likely to get it. And if I do, I’m more likely to catch it early.

The reason is quite simple. I’m informed. And once I understand what can be done, I’m more likely to do it.

In my case, I’m surrounded by fabulous information. That’s because I’m the web coordinator for the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. But it’s almost as easy for others to get access to this information, and I’m going to make it even easier by doing a series of tips in this blog.

Todd reports that people aren’t talking about it. While this is more of a problem in communities of color, death and cancer still aren’t exactly popular subjects in my non-work circles.

So, it’s time to get talking about cancer. For now, let me suggest you read Lewis’ piece: Barriers to progress against cancer begin with silence.

I’m finally over the worst cold I’ve had in years, and now lots of other people are succumbing. While recuperating, I had to relearn a few things, and thought I’d pass these tips on to other geeks during the cold and flu season.

• Lower expectations of yourself. You just can’t get as much done, so if you’re not expecting as much, it makes life easier.
  
• Drink juice and tea if you like them. No two people in my family who had this cold liked the same juice, but we all agreed it was about the only thing that tasted any good early on.
  
• Rest and take care of yourself (even if you are a swashbuckling young man).
• Play games and catch up on your reading (be it online or print).
• Wash your hands. It makes it less likely you’ll get something else as well.
  
• Perhaps most important, protect your computers from yourself. I tried to install Linux under Parallels. This was a bad idea, but fortunately not a disaster. So don’t do as I did. Please do as I say.

Every holiday season, Vanderbilt’s Health Plus urges employees to Hold the Stuffing. Staff who participate are weighed in the week before Thanksgiving and weighed out the week after New Years, with a goal of gaining no more than two pounds.

I’d never participated before, but this year, given pants that were ever tighter, I got with the program. Today was my day of reckoning. And I made it. Woo hoo! Now I just have to not eat all of the lovely chocolate that’s still hanging around my house. And so my mantra must be…. A healthy web diva is a happy web diva. Thank you, Health Plus, for helping this unrepentant chocoholic.