A poodle named Lucy refuses to leave her owners side and has become very popular with the nurses and visitors. The patient Maggie Bellamy is staying at the hospice while she is undergoing cancer treatments.

Lucy likes to snuggle up on the rug near Maggie's bed and goes for short walks around the grounds. Ms. Bellamy said "I thought it was incredible when I was told that Lucy could come and stay with me in the hospice. She frets over me, but is very well behaved and everyone fell in love with her. She is good therapy for other patients too."

Lucy is the only dog you will see at this hospice. Dogs belonging to Pets as Therapy also pop in with their owners to visit patients.

Fraser Meek, manager of the hospice in-patient unit, said "We are happy to welcome a patient's pet to be bought along either for a visit, or to stay in the room where possible. Visits from gentle pets help the patients relax and add to the homely atmosphere of the hospice".

What a nice story!

Living Beyond Breast Cancer (LBBC) -- a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering all women affected by breast cancer to live as long as possible with the best quality of life -- recently began offering a new resource for breast cancer survivors, for both the newly diagnosed and those with metastatic disease.

"The first few weeks after diagnosis can be extremely difficult emotionally, and women with advanced disease often do not get the support and resources they need," said Jean Sachs, LBBC executive director. "We want to give them an understanding of their choices to help them make informed decisions regarding their physical and emotional health."

This understanding comes in the form of a 28-page brochure -- What to expect . . . today, tomorrow and beyond: Steps for coping with the medical, emotional and practical concerns of breast cancer -- available free on the Internet or by request. This guide, a road map, addresses topics such as coping with the news of a new diagnosis, telling family and friends, understanding pathology reports, choosing a medical team, asking for help, and finding support.

LBBC offers multiple addidtional resources -- including specialized navigation tools on its website that lead to a wealth of information. Visitors can Learn More about LBBC. They can Stay Informed through news, message boards, and other resources. They can Participate in events and programs. And they can Support LBBC through volunteer efforts and financial donations.

LBBC was founded in 1991 by a radiation oncologist who focused exclusively on meeting the needs of women post-treatment. She ran the organization out of the third floor of her home using volunteers. Few resources existed for women affected by breast cancer at the time, and so she tried to fill the void. In 1986, an executive director came on board, increased the LBBC budget from $100,000 to $1.8 million per year, expanded all programs and services, and worked to secure LBBC as a solid, dependable resource for all women, of all stages of breast cancer and in all phases of treatment and recovery. And now, in 2006, that is exactly what it is.

Singer and songwriter Jewel sat down with ABC News This Week's George Stephanopoulos to discuss her support of a bill that will allow women to stay in the hospital at least 48 hours after a mastectomy. Called drive-thru mastectomies, the current practice of discharging women hours after surgery does not allow women sufficient time to heal before being released from the hospital.

During the interview Jewel placed the blame on insurance companies and HMOs who have decided that a mastectomy is not major surgery but an outpatient procedure. You have got to be kidding me, what an absurdity.

As Jewel stated, "This certainly isn't a merely feminist issue. This is about the care of our loved ones."

I don't see it as much a feminist issue as simply a matter of compassionate, and in this case, safe health care of mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. The obnoxious practice of bean counters to decide that any major surgery is an outpatient procedure to save on health care expenses has been going on far too long.

Jewel will travel to Washington to help deliver 12 million signatures to Congress to support a health care bill that requires insurance companies and HMOs to cover the cost of proper care for women undergoing mastectomy. The VOICES: Jewel Lobbies for Breast Cancer Bill interview is available as video for viewing online.

Dooce. It's a blog. It's a woman who blogs. Being dooced is a word that means losing your job because of something you blogged. Back when blogs first started to become a popular activity, Heather B. Armstrong got fired for writing about work and the people she worked with, and it made national mainstream news. Dooce became a cautionary tale of weighing how much a blogger should reveal and what protection they should have in what they shared online. Eventually, everyone you blog about is going to find your blog. No one really thought that before Armstrong got fired for her satirical take on where she worked.

To this day, and by her own account, she receives hundreds of hate emails and blog comments. But she also has hundreds of thousands of devoted blog fans, readers who stop by at least once a day to get Dooce's take on her every day life -- which is usually quirky, insightful, irreverant and always humorous. From motherhood to Mormons, no one is safe and no topic off-limits as far as I can tell.

The latest blogging at Dooce has to do with cancer. It all started with a scar that kept growing and self-employment health insurance that had Heather asking how much a biopsy would cost before consenting to one because if it cost as much as a casket she needed to weigh her options. Luckily, whatever answer the doctor gave her, she consented to having the growth checked. The results of the biopsy are in. Heather has been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, as she blogs, the most common of all cancers.

"It is not a melanoma, and most likely will not kill me, but the fact that I have one at my age is cause for concern. It is the result of many years of negligence on my part, of all those times I never fully protected my skin from the sun. I'd say it wasn't ever willful negligence, necessarily, maybe just a huge portion of carelessness mixed with laziness and the idiotic assumption that it would never happen to me.

Now I'm afraid to go near a window else a ray of sun touch my skin and kill me instantly. Irrational, yes, but look what being rational got me in the first place: CANCER. Next week she is going to cut the whole thing out of my arm, and then I am going to bring it home and plant it in a jar next to the kitchen window. I will name it Ed."

After Dooce gets done blogging cancer, cancer will never be the same.

According to former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., "Currently, about 95 percent of health care dollars in the United States are spent on treating diseases, with relatively little attention paid to preventing diseases, which should be a national priority."

As a result, Partnership for Prevention has released a report, Priorities for America's Health, that ranks the top 25 preventive health services that are most effective. Of the top 25, ten are related to cancer. Following is a list of the top ten ways to practice cancer prevention.

Karen Neuburger, Chief Lifestyle Officer of KN Ltd., has been on a lifelong quest for comfort, and as a result, brought comfort into the lives of many women. According to the profile of Neuburger, she shed the corporate dress code of her fashion career, shred her pantyhose, tossed her pumps, and created her comfort lifestyle brand. In 1994, at age 40, she became a stay-at-home mom and introduced her first pair of all-day pajamas. Oh, if you are a mother, you have to appreciate her sense of comfort and admire her marketing creativity in making it acceptable to wear pajamas during the day. If you are a woman diagnosed with breast cancer, going through chemotherapy or experiencing chemo-induced or chemoprevention hormone therapy menopause, you are going to love this woman for what she has designed.

Hot flash PJs, a line of sleepwear inspired by the sweat-wicking properties of modern athletic clothing, is one of the lines of clothing offered by The Karen Neuburger company. Made with a cotton/poly blend to keep women cool and dry at night, the 2 and 3-piece pajama sets, gowns, and short sets in pretty floral prints, plaids, stripes and solids are available in missy and plus sizes. To learn more about this line of clothing, go to KN Cool.