My sister has skin cancer -- the basal cell variety. She has two spots, both on her chest, each one scheduled to be surgically removed in a few weeks. If it were me with this new diagnosis, I'm sure I'd be freaking out, maybe because I've already had breast cancer and tend to panic about any cancer or maybe just because I'm a worrier by nature. But my sister is taking her cancer news in stride, and I am too -- because now that I've done a little research, it seems this type of cancer is pretty easy to beat.

Here's a little refresher lesson on the skin: The skin is the largest organ in the body, and is made of three layers -- the epidermis (top layer), dermis (middle layer), and subcutis (deepest layer). For the purpose of this post, let's focus on the epidermis.

The epidermis has three layers -- an upper, middle, and a bottom layer. This bottom layer is comprised of basal cells. This is where basal cell cancer begins.

Sometimes, illnesses are easy to define in length. When you have a cold, for instance, you're all better once your nose stops running. When you have a broken arm, it's better once the cast comes off. But when you have cancer, are you ever really 'cured'? Is there a point where you stop being a cancer patient and go back your normal life, claiming you're 'all better now'? Is it that simple?

Think about this: Some insurance companies don't consider someone cured until they've been cancer-free for 10 years. Ten years is a long time, and I doubt most survivors wait that long to celebrate their victory. This survivor, for instance, is celebrating five years of being cancer-free, and is looking forward to calling herself cured. But her insurance company won't call her cured for another five years, and a recent statistic has shown that more than half of breast cancer survivors have a recurrence more than five years after they were first diagnosed.

So is cancer a life-long weight you have to bear? Can you be definitively cured? Or is it not even worth worrying about, when there's a life to be lived and love to be shared?

On Tuesday, researchers announced that a three-drug cocktail may help women with HER2-positive breast cancer better than any other drug used on its own. About one quarter of women with breast cancer make up this HER2 category.

Tests on mice revealed using the three drugs along with breast cancer drug tamoxifen helped wipe out tumors altogether. And the tumors did not come back. This is the first time mice were cured of a very aggressive human breast tumor. Incidentally, when a single drug was used, tumors returned within several weeks.

The three wonder drugs used in this study -- all are monoclonal antibodies that precisely target certain aspects of tumors -- are the experimental drug pertuzumab; trastuzumab, also known as Herceptin; and gefitinib, or Iressa.

Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, this study supports the notion that HER2-positive tumors eventually become resistant to one drug and attacking them on several fronts seems to work better.

There's a new vaccine out there that stimulates the immune system to find and destroy breast cancer cells. In early experiments, the vaccine held off or stopped the growth of tumors in all of the mice studied. Some mice were even cured.

Think about this:

Research presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research reveals this vaccine is different from most under development that help kick-start the immune systems of sick patients. In this case, the vaccine tells the immune system to recognize breast cancer cells and to attack and kill them on the spot.

One researcher says breast cancer cells usually fly under the radar of the immune system. To combat this problem, the injectable vaccine uses a bacteria-type substance that is altered to contain the gene HER2/neu and also antibodies that rev up the immune system. This makes the body react and wipe out cells containing HER2/neu.

If continued studies prove promising, the vaccine would work for the 15 to 25 percent of women whose breast cancers overexpress HER2/neu.

There is something to be said for the power of prayer. On the morning the lump in my breast was removed, a friend rallied more than 80 friends from our local MOMS Club to say a prayer for me -- at the exact time I was wheeled into an operating room. I know nothing of the prayer they said for me, but I do know I emerged from surgery with my breast intact and with the knowledge that my cancer had not spread to my lymph nodes.

I don't know for sure what role prayer played in my good fortune -- but I don't discount that it is in some way responsible for the fact that I am alive today.

But there are other obvious factors responsible for my survival -- like chemotherapy, radiation, physical therapy, targeted drug therapy, and counseling. So I don't think prayer alone saved me. I think it took a balance of varied forces to save my life -- a balance one Ohio man was not able to achieve.

The children of Darrell Perry are filing suit against their aunt, Darlene Bishop -- Perry's sister and an evangelical preacher -- who claims both she and Perry were cured of cancer through prayer.

Perry was not cured and died a year and a half ago from throat cancer. And Bishop now reveals she was never diagnosed with breast cancer -- like she claimed at one time -- but was merely worried she may have had the disease. Yet the message in her book Your Life Follows Your Words speaks loud and clear in its message -- that prayer can cure cancer.

Perry's children says their aunt is lying and exploiting their father for her own financial gain. They have filed two suits -- one accusing her of mismanaging and misusing Perry's estate and the other alleging wrongful death for convincing Perry to pray rather than seek medical help.

In 2006, 174,470 people will be diagnosed with lung cancer in the United States. About 92,700 men and 81,770 women will develop the disease -- the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women.

An estimated 162,460 men and women will die of lung cancer this year, accounting for 28 percent of all cancer deaths and taking more lives than colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined. While most people diagnosed with lung cancer will die within the first two years of diagnosis -- this has not changed in 10 years -- some people are cured. There are currently about 333,000 long-term survivors.

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute announced Thursday that two cancer patients with rapidly growing melanoma were successfully treated with gene therapy. The patients -- both men -- were given immune system cells from their own blood that were engineered to attack their tumors. This took place 18 months ago -- and they are still surviving with no evidence of cancer. This success comes after a three-decade effort by surgeon Steven Rosenberg to find ways to use the immune system to fight cancer. This approach is not always successful, however, and 15 other patients who got this same treatment did not survive. Still, Rosenberg believes this small-scale success is proof that the principle of gene therapy can work. And others agree -- calling his work an important landmark, even though the response rate of two out of 17 is not ideal.

Rosenberg does not claim the two surviving patients are cured. If they survive for five years, he might classify them as possibly cured -- but even after five years, cancer can come back. He does consider this a huge breakthrough for these two men who are still alive and well. And he says he has every expectation that he can get the process to work even better in the future.

If at the smoky smell and sizzling sound of frying bacon you go mmmm....Bacon! then you might be dismayed by a review published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that suggests processed meats might be a cause of stomach cancer. But might is a big word in this specific report.

One, they don't have enough evidence to say for certain that bacon, sausage, hot dogs, salami, ham, and smoked or cured meat leads to an increased risk for stomach cancer. Two, the researchers did not take into account other studies of processed meats consumption that do reflect an increased risk of stomach cancer in those who also suffer from Helicobacter pylori infection. Early thought on this is that the infection in combination with processed meats consumption might be what increases stomach cancer risk. Definitive evidence is still not conclusive.

Consuming multiple servings of processed meats on a weekly basis is not a good idea, and most people know that. The news of this ambiguous review of previous studies still leaves the question wide open as to stomach cancer risks in relation to a diet of processed meats. Which begs the question: why did they release the findings of this report as significant news? It makes for a good news hook to attract more readers and television viewers, but I don't think it really tells us much in the way that we can take with us to the breakfast table.

Dannii Minogue told the British magazine Cosmopolitan that she is convinced laughter cured her older sister Kylie's breast cancer. While the prognosis was always good, Dannii admits both sisters struggled to believe everything would be fine, so they dressed up in silly clothes and watched comedies to keep a positive attitude and spirits up.

Can laughter cure cancer? Not by itself -- but there are numerous studies that show laughter initiates a powerful biological process of feel-good healing chemicals that support and strengthen the immune system. We have done several posts here, here, here, here and here about the healing power of humor and the laughter associated with it. So, even if it seems farfetched and unrealistic for Dannii to believe that laughter cured her sister of breast cancer, she might be more right than she is wrong.