Christine Stewart of Practical Truisms, a lung cancer survivor, was part of the Naples Relay For Life kick-off party, where cancer survivors remembered Dana Reeve for her work as a cancer advocate. Stewart hopes the death of Dana Reeve will educate people about lung cancer. Stewart had never been a smoker either, when she was diagnosed with lung cancer.

"Lung cancer has a difficult time getting funds because people think oh, just don't smoke and you won't get it, problem solved," says Stewart, lung cancer survivor. Dana Reeve and Christine Stewart remind us, this is just not the case. Hopefully, with more public awareness, the stigma often associated with lung cancer being a smoker's disease, will fade. Lung cancer research is seriously under-funded.

As a reader of The Cancer Blog, you may remember Stewart, from Practical Truisms: inspiration from a lung cancer survivor. In 2004, Christine Stewart, a young woman with two small children, who did not smoke cigarettes, was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. At the time of diagnosis, Stewart was given a two percent chance of surviving a lung cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes, tailbone and brain. Because of a clinical trial drug given to Stewart, she is with us today, in cancer remission. Stewart has been a joy to get to know, and is one of my favorite women in the cancer community.