Walking into my cancer center waiting room is one of my most sobering experiences. I enter this room -- jam-packed full of men, women, and children -- every three months for a breast cancer follow-up. It never gets easier. It always startles me, stirs my emotions, makes me realize how so many people are touched by such a treacherous and all-consuming disease. The fact that I sit in this room, that I am one of these many people, still doesn't seem real.

It's been almost three years since I got a phone call from a surgeon declaring, "You have cancer." I didn't believe it then. Even after all I've been through -- surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and more -- I hardly believe it now. But it's real. I have scars and new hair and a whole new set of worries to prove it.

Walking into that waiting room proves it's real. There's nothing like it. There's also nothing like walking out, with a clean bill of health and the promise of three more months.

Tomorrow I report for one of my six-month radiation follow-ups. My radiation oncologist will review how I've fared for the past two years since my left breast was zapped, day after day, week after week, in an aggressive attempt to keep cancer from returning to the same local area where it first reared its ugly head. How horrified I would be if I learned the machines used to treat my cancer were faulty, that they did not in fact do anything aggressive, that they were essentially ineffective.

Hundreds of brain cancer patients may be hearing this horrific news, now that malfunctioning machines have been ordered shut down following a manufacturer's warning.

Brainlab of Munich, Germany claims a small targeting error occurred with their machines but that it is unlikely to cause problems for patients. If I were one of these patients, I would still be worried. Targeting the tumor bed area is crucial in any cancer treatment. I don't like the sound of "targeting error," regardless of how minor it may be.

Opera singer Beverly Sills is reportedly at a Manhattan hospital, gravely ill with cancer and with her daughter by her side. This comes from the Associated Press and while those who know her best neither confirm nor deny the news, Sills did cite health and family reasons when she resigned as chairwoman of the Metropolitan Opera two years ago.

Cancer first struck Sills in 1974. She underwent successful surgery and went on to make her Met singing debut in 1975.

Sills, 78, first hit the opera circuit in 1947 in Philadelphia. She had a bit role in Carmen and later became a star with the smaller New York City Opera and was acclaimed for performances in Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe, Massenet's Manon, and Handel's Guilio Cesare. Known by the nickname Bubbles -- which some say matches her personality perfectly -- the red-haired diva made many appearances on The Tonight Show and The Muppet Show. She also sang often with her friend Carol Burnett.

Jacqueline, a clever and crafty breast cancer survivor made this shirt -- pictured at right -- especially for the 2006 Susan G. Komen walk in Central Park. She didn't like the over-sized, over-advertised shirts passed out to the masses, so she designed her own. Notice the songbird stripe on the right side of the shirt? This seamstress renovated the piece to create visual balance for women who have lost a breast and wish to forgo mastectomy and prostheses.

Jacqueline, who has named her clothing line Rhea Belle, had a right-side mastectomy in January 2004. She knew she would leave her body as is, but her existing wardrobe didn't "fit" her new shape. When she realized she could either accept her changed architecture or camouflage it, she chose the former.

Oakland Athletics center fielder Nick Swisher appeared at Saturday evening's pregame event wearing three ponytails. Prepared to donate his locks to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths non-profit campaign, Swisher said just before his ponytails were snipped, "I feel like Pippi Longstocking. I look so goofy right now. But if I can make a difference in one or two women's lives, it's worth it."

Swisher's father -- major league baseball player Steve Swisher -- did the cutting honors. And it was fitting the two men were in on this endeavor together because Swisher's grandmother -- his dad's mother -- died from brain cancer two years ago.

"The initial idea was out of respect for my mom -- but the second thing is: It's time for a haircut,'' Steve Swisher said. "I'm so proud of Nick. He's bringing attention to a good cause and that's what it's all about.''

Pantene creates free wigs for women dealing with hair loss from cancer treatment.

If your mom was one to harp on you about eating your vegetables, it was likely because she knew how good veggies are for the body. Moms everywhere now have research on their side.

A large study of 500,000 American retirees has shown that increasing consumption of fruits or vegetables is enough to reduce the risk of head and neck cancer. Specifically, eating six servings of fruit and vegetables per day per 1,000 calories cut the risk of these cancers by 29 percent compared to eating one and a half servings.

"It may not sound like news that vegetables protect from cancer, but there is actually some controversy in the literature," says Dr. Alan Kristal, associate head of the cancer prevention program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Clearly, diet plays a role in cancer. Experts believe that up to two-thirds of all cancer cases stem from lifestyle factors such as smoking, lack of exercise, and diet. So keep crunching those carrots and growing those green beans. You'll make your momma proud.

Daniel Sieberg, science and technology correspondent for CBS News and blogger for Tech Talk recently went searching for online sites offering help and hope for those seeking insight into the world of cancer.

Sieberg went about his search by typing into Google the word cancer. Thrown back at him were more than 250 million results. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and misinformation, Sieberg sifted and sorted through everything that faced him -- and he narrowed down the results to his favorite five.

Sieberg is right on with his picks, and while I personally would have included The Cancer Blog as a source loaded with accurate, reliable, and inspiring information, I still commend Sieberg for so effectively hunting down some very good cancer resources. For what it's worth, I happen to highly recommend them myself.

American Cancer Society
National Cancer Institute
WebMD
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Leroy Sievers Blog

It might not be possible at this time to eradicate cancer altogether. But we may be able to stop cancer cells in their tracks through a process called senescence.

In senescence, cells don't divide. And when cells don't divide, they don't grow. In such a scenario then, cancer cells wouldn't divide and therefore couldn't grow.

Think about this:

According to lab tests on mice, triggering senescence in certain cells hampers the growth of some tumors.

Researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston are the ones behind the scenes on this project -- the study appears online in EMBO Reports, a publication of the European Molecular Biology Organization -- and all eyes are on the p53 gene.

The p53 gene lives within cells and works to nip cancer in the bud by springing to action in damaged cells that may be spinning themselves into a cancer frenzy.

Researchers say senescence ordered by the p53 gene is extremely important in suppressing tumor formation and is as important as apoptosis -- a type of programmed cell death. But in some cancers, senescence might not be enough to halt cancer, they found.

OK, so senescence is not a perfect approach to halting all cancers. But it seems to work for some -- so I say for now, let's take what we can get.

When Dr. Jian-Wei Gu went to Mississippi to study the cardiovascular system and the process of blood vessel growth, he had no idea he'd make national headlines about his research into the world of cancer.

Gu, assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, says his discovery of the mechanism by which alcohol consumption causes tumor growth was purely accidental.

And extremely significant.

Scientists have known for a hundred years about the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. A study from Paris in 1910 showed that 80 percent of patients with cancer of the esophagus or gastric track were alcoholics. More recently, scientists have found correlations between alcohol consumption and cancer of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, large bowel, and even the breasts. Yet lab experiments have always failed to show the effects in animals that investigators knew to be true in humans.

Until now.

It seems past studies used too much alcohol -- in concentrations of 20 percent -- and the animals just wasted away while showing no tumor growth. But when Gu used concentrations of one percent -- about one to two drinks per day in humans -- to study blood vessel growth, he detected stimulated tumor growth in both chick embryos and mice. Thus, his cancer discovery was born.

Gu has further concluded that melanoma cancers in mice grew significantly faster and larger in the mice who consumed the equivalent of one or two alcoholic drinks a day than the mice receiving no alcohol.

Gu's findings, now confirmed by other scientists, are evidence of what many have long suspected -- alcohol, even in moderation, increases cancer risk.

Simply being female puts all women at risk for breast cancer. That and age, race, family history, personal history, genetic make-up, when they had children, when they reach menopause, and a whole host of other possible factors.

Now U.S. doctors are officially calling body mass index, breast density, and alcohol consumption predictors of the disease, says Therese Bevers, medical director of the Cancer Prevention Center, at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Bevers helped write updated guidelines for the prevention of breast cancer and presented them at the 12th annual National Comprehensive Cancer Network in Hollywood, Florida on Friday.

The guidelines, featuring the revised list of risk factors, also offer treatment options for women -- including bilateral mastectomy for women who have tested positive for the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 as well as possible medical treatments with drugs such as tamoxifen and raloxifene.

It seems screening for lung cancer doesn't save lives and it doesn't prevent advanced disease. But it does lead to potentially unnecessary and harmful treatment.

This isn't the final word on the use of CT scans to screen smokers and former smokers for the disease. But right now, the hope some experts had for the special X-rays to detect tiny lung abnormalities has been diminished by a large study that is still in the works. And until conclusive evidence says the screening is useful, the American Cancer Society will not endorse the test.

While CT screening did increase diagnosis and treatment -- those screened were three times more likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer and 10 times more likely to have lung surgery than predicted -- study co-author Dr. Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York says, "We don't see a trace of evidence that a single life was saved, that a single case of advanced cancer was avoided."

And because CT scanning led to more biopsies and surgeries, patients were put at risk for complications such as lung puncture, bleeding, and infection, according to Bach, whose work is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"Getting screened for lung cancer with CT scanning is not only unproven, it's potentially a risky endeavor," he said.

Until an effective screening tool emerges -- possibly still years away -- experts say there is one surefire way to protect yourself from lung cancer. Stop smoking.

A study appearing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology reveals there may be something out there that can extend the lives of patients with recurrent prostate cancer.

This something is a new class of anti-cancer targeted drugs that scientists at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles say are quite promising, despite their ineffectiveness in some prostate cancer patients with no previous chemotherapy treatment.

Pertuzumab, a molecular targeted compound that has been used successfully in ovarian cancer patients, has been shown to block the human epidermal growth factor receptor family by binding to and inhibiting the function of HER2 receptors. They essentially block a key pathway that leads to cancer growth. And this blockage can possibly offer a better, longer life for recurrent prostate cancer patients whose diseases no longer respond to traditional chemotherapy.

Pertuzumab, marketed under the brand name Omnitarg by Roche and Genentech, is just one of many targeted cancer therapies that give researchers hope that cancer may one day be a lifetime disease that can be skillfully managed.

I know just how Jon Lester feels as he survives the cancer that took him out of the game of baseball and threw him into the arms of the medical system.

It's not the baseball I can identify with. It's the little bit of cancer fear that never really goes away. And it's the will to return to the land of the living that Lester and I share.

"When you're laying in bed at night, when you're not doing anything, you think about it a little bit," he says. "As long as I keep busy, I'm all right. Every now and again I feel something and go, `OK, what was that?' but I try not to think about it too much."

Lately, Lester is thinking mostly about a return to Boston's pitching staff, less than six months after a cancer curve ball came right at him, threatening both his promising career and his life.

Lester, whose weight was down to 190 during chemotherapy, is back up to 212 -- five pounds less than his normal weight -- and his arms are powerful, his legs strong, his appearance healthy.

As a rookie last year, Lester became the first Red Sox left-hander to win his first five decisions. He was 7-2 with a 4.76 ERA when cancer came crashing into his world. Diagnosed with anaplastic large cell lymphoma in August, Lester received treatment at both the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and at his hometown Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. His last chemotherapy dose was delivered on December 4. His last check-up was in January. And now, newly 23 and cancer-free, Lester is ready to play ball.

Lester is prepared for his coaching staff to hold him back. He says he can tell everyone until he's blue in the face that he's ready but he knows the staff has his best interests in mind. He trusts their professional opinions, and he'll accept a return to the minors if that's what is in store for him.

"I'm not as hard on myself as I was last year," he said. "It's just a matter of enjoying playing baseball and not necessarily the result. So (I'm) just trying to enjoy things and take it day by day and live my life the best I can."

Katherine Schaefer was investigating methods for treating the inflammation seen in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis when something terrible happened -- she noticed her carefully cultured cells were dead. And then something wonderful happened -- she realized she had stumbled upon a potential new method of attacking cancerous tumors that have become resistant to existing drugs.

Schaefer and her colleagues at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York were testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator -- a compound never considered a cancer drug, or a drug of any kind really -- when Schaefer made a calculation error and used a lot more of the compound than she should have. And her cells died.

Upon further study, Schaefer found the compound killed just about every possible epithelial tumor cell. These cells line organs such as the colon and also the skin. The compound, that works like taxane drugs but without eventual tumor resistance, also killed colon tumors in mice without making them sick.

The research team, whose findings are published in the journal International Cancer Research, plans more safety tests in mice. And eventually, if their outcomes are promising, they plan to design something they can patent as a new drug -- because they would love to see this disastrous lab experiment one day lead to treatment for cancers of the colon, esophagus, liver, and skin.