Ever wonder where your money goes when you make a charitable cancer contribution? Well, here's the lowdown on how the Susan G. Komen Foundation spends their donated funds.

For 25 years, this world's largest and most progressive grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists has allocated 33 percent of all dollars for research and awards, and 29 percent for education. Fifteen percent of donations are spent on screening, eight percent on fundraising, and eight percent on administration. Finally, seven percent goes towards treatment.

Komen professionals say they are extremely careful about how they spend the dollars entrusted to their care. And that makes me happy.

New York Yankees legend and sports broadcaster Bobby Murcer will undergo surgery today at MD Anderson Hospital in Houston for a brain tumor, according to a New York Daily News published report. Murcer, who is 60, had been experiencing headaches and a lack of energy. The tumor was found during an MRI performed on Christmas eve.

Murcer is quoted by the newspaper as saying, "I'm feeling OK and we're just going to have to see what this surgery will bring. I'm hopeful that everything will turn out OK and I'm thankful to have so many friends who are rooting for me."

Murcer played professional baseball for 17 seasons. According to Wikipedia's profile, "A shortstop in the minor leagues, Murcer was slated to be the Yankees' third baseman but ended up being the center fielder following in the footsteps of Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio. Almost anyone would suffer in comparison to those members of the Baseball Hall of Fame, but Murcer did well enough during the years the Yankees finished in the second division to become one of the team's most popular players of that era."

Murcer played for the New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants, and the Chicago Cubs before returning to play for the Yankees again. He retired and became a sports broadcaster for the Yankees, going on to win three Emmy Awards for live sports coverage.

Mid-October, we shared that actor John Forsythe, whose portrayal of Dynasty's Blake Carrington garnered him two Golden Globe Awards and several Emmy nominations, and who was the persuasive voice of Charlie on the television and film versions of Charlie's Angels, had entered Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles for colon cancer treatment.

More often than not, when we write a post concerning a celebrity, public figure or well-known blogger in the cancer community and cancer, it is in memorium, each one as painful to compose as the last.

Happily, this time, I am sharing more hopeful news. In mid-November, Forsythe, who is 88 years young, was released from the hospital and entered a rehab facility in Northern California. His family expects him home for Christmas.

According to reports, the Forsythe family has expressed gratitude for the outpouring of love and concern from the community. Charlie's Angel Cheryl Ladd, who replaced Farrah Fawcett in the television series -- is said to have sent her well wishes to Forsythe by saying, "He is my dear friend. I can't wait until he comes home so we can all gather around the dinner table. We have been praying for him."

About.com Colon Cancer Guide Donna Myers provides an address for anyone who wishes to send well wishes to John Forsythe and his family. You can write to:

John Forsythe
P.O. Box 1739
Santa Ynez, CA 93460

We send our best wishes to the family as well -- and a most Merry Christmas.

Theater, film and television actress Carrie Nye, wife of television talk show host Dick Cavett, has lost her life to lung cancer.

In 1965, she was nominated for a Tony Award for the musical Half a Sixpence, and in 1980 she was nominated for an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Tallulah Bankhead in the television movie The Scarlett O'Hara War. Her humor and accent were often compared with that of Tallulah Bankhead.

She performed at the Williamstown Theater Festival in northern Massachusetts from 1955 until the late 1970s with leads in A Streetcar Named Desire, The Skin of Our Teeth and Nude With Violin.

"Carrie Nye will be remembered as a woman whose vibrant spirit and wonderful acting in many roles enriched the Festival," said Roger Rees, Williamstown's artistic director. "On a personal note, I fondly remember many summer afternoons spent at her home in Montauk where she reminisced about Tennessee Williams visits to the Berkshires and his great affection for the Williamstown Theatre Festival."

She appeared in films which included Creep Show and Hello Again, as well as the CBS daytime soap Guiding Light. Nye was 69.

Lord of the Rings Oscar award-winning filmmakers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have donated over $300,000 dollars to the University of California for human embryonic stem cell research.

Jackson is quoted as saying, "We have lost close friends and relatives to cancer and Parkinson's disease, and the level of personal suffering inflicted on patients and their families by these diseases is horrific."

The Bill and Joan Jackson Scholars Fund, in honor of Jackson's parents, will be established through the university to award two scholarships to students specializing in stem cell research. Because the US government restricts research funding for the use of stem cells from human embryos -- which some religious groups have objected to as morally equivalent to abortion -- and others support as the path to cures for many diseases including cancer -- human embryonic stem cell research in this country requires private funding.

"Stem cell therapy has the potential to treat a multitude of diseases and illnesses, which up until now have been labelled incurable. It has the capacity to exponentially improve the quality of life for those who currently suffer from spinal cord injury, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and many other debilitating medical conditions, " stated Jackson.

Joining such notable poet laureates as Robert Frost, Rita Dove, Billy Collins and James Dickey, New Hampshire poet Donald Hall has become the 14th United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

South Carolina's poet laureate Marjory Wentworth writes in Poet laureate writes of ordinary things that Hall is one of America's most distinguished and respected literary figures. Educated at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford universities, he is an award-winning writer who has published 18 books of poetry, a memoir, essay collections and children's books.

In a farmhouse in rural New Hampshire, near where Robert Frost once lived, Hall shared a life with his wife poet Jane Kenyon for more than thirty years -- before her death to cancer. Bill Moyers featured the couple in the Emmy Award-winning documentary film A Life Together. Filmed in 1993, Hall had then recently recovered from cancer. Hall said at the time that the odds were against him living another ten years. Hall beat the odds. Kenyon did not.

Kenyon was in the prime of life, being in her 40's, when she died of leukemia, and Hall often speaks of her life and death with his poetry now published in a book called Without.

Wentworth says in her review of Without, "For anyone who has lost someone they love to cancer or any other illness, this collection of poems will touch you and provide solace. The day-to-day details will be painfully familiar, but it is a good thing to read his words and share in his grief. His gift is his ability to describe the kind of pain and loss that is indescribable for the rest of us."

When Wentworth attended a memorial reading in his wife's honor, she said Hall stated, "My heart is broken, and now I am breaking the world's heart." In addition to Wentworth's review, you can read an interview in conversation with Donald Hall and Judith Moore here.

Does life imitate art or does art imitate life? It's an age-old chicken and the egg question of which came first and which then followed. When it comes to primetime television, with images beamed into the living rooms and bedrooms of nearly every household in this country  -- it might be more the subject of distortion for the sake of sensationalism than imitation.

Today, the Academy of Television Arts&Science announced this year's 58th annual Primetime Emmy Awards nominees for drama series that include two weekly medical shows, House and Grey's Anatomy. Scrubs is nominated in the comedy series category.

Which got me to thinking about the impact, if there is one, on the viewer's idea about the medical community.

While there might be a drug-addicted doctor out there with such a genius IQ that he is supported by a medical team that makes allowances for the anti-social behavior his addiction creates, I am certain in real life the medical community does a better job of self-policing itself than they do in regard to House.

When it comes to watching the social drama of sex, introspective angst and egos run rampant on Grey's Anatomy, I suppose when you put any group of people together it's only a matter of time before some of them become entrenched in a mobius strip of narcissism, but still I don't believe this is a realistic representation in the life of an intern.  

At least Scrubs is just silly and does not attempt to seriously portray itself as anything other than a light-hearted spoof. But when it comes to shows written with an intent for dramatic real life settings, I wonder if the images we are exposed to on a regular basis can have an influence on perception and can alter attitude -- especially if you are not critically analyzing what you are watching -- and for the sake of entertainment, who does that?  Do you think these medical shows, on a subconscious level, affect the viewer's perception of the medical community?

On June 20, Academy Award-winning Welsh actress Catherine Zeta Jones will return to her homeland of Wales to celebrate the opening of the first children's hospital in Wales.

Long-time patron of Noah's Ark Appeal, Catherine Zeta Jones, along with celebrities such as Charlotte Church and cricket hero Ian Botham, helped raise over £7m for the first phase of the new children's hospital.

At the ceremony, Catherine Zeta Jones, with her husband actor Michael Douglas, will unveil a plaque to mark the official opening. Noah's Ark Appeal continues its fundraising activity for additional projects at the new children's hospital. For more information, visit Noah's Ark Appeal.

On Monday, May 22nd, 2006, the day before the 41st Annual Academy of Country Music Awards, Vince Gill will host the Academy of Country Music Celebrity Golf Classic. This year's event will be a fundraiser on behalf of the Academy of Country Music Charitable Foundation to benefit T.J. Martell Foundation, an organization that supports promising and innovative research and researchers for leukemia, cancer and AIDS.

T.J. Martell Foundation researchers focus on promising breakthroughs, new treatments and protocols that are bringing them that much closer to actual cures. Vincent Grant Gill, as a 15-time Grammy award winner, with 18 CMA honors, 22 million in album sales and president of the Country Music Hall of Fame, is a down-home boy who enjoys worldwide fame. Founded in 1964, The Academy of Country Music -- with more than 4,000 members -- supports, promotes, and enhances the advancement of the country music industry worldwide.