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.

Just two months after her mother lost her battle with gall bladder cancer, Liane was diagnosed with breast cancer. It all happened earlier this year -- and while Liane is still mourning the loss of her mother, she is also still managing the madness of her own disease. Liane is surviving with courage, with determination, with the same powerful spirit that powered her mother's fight.

Liane lives in a small city -- population 43,000 -- in northern Alberta Canada. She has been happily married for 18 years and has two daughters, ages 13 and 15, and a golden retriever named Sunny. Liane loves to garden, cook, read, and spend time with family. She normally works full-time in a real estate and property management office but has been blessed with six months off for treatment. Liane is already -- without a doubt -- a survivor.

When you are a billionaire, and 83 years-old, and driven by a personal crusade to change the health of the people you meet, social graces take a back seat. Recently, while Dole Food owner David H. Murdock was talking to a contractor about a construction job, he stopped the conversation short by telling the man he was too fat and would die before the job was finished. Murdock offered the man an extra $100,000 dollars bonus if he lost 60 pounds. They eventually agreed on 30 pounds.

Murdock wasn't always that outspoken about nutrition and health-- the death of his wife to cancer changed him. He came to the belief that it was years of eating a diet high in saturated fats that led to her death. He became a vegetarian after losing her, and rather blunt with anyone he meets now who seems to be allowing themselves to be overweight or to eat unhealthy.

It is difficult to be too offended by his brashness and lack of diplomacy, considering his history of loss and subsequent motivation. In Kannapolis, North Carolina, Murdock is putting his money where his mouth is in having a 350-acre biotechnology research complex built to advance scientific knowledge about the role of food and nutrition in human health. Another project in Westlake Village is the California Wellbeing Institute scheduled to open in November and designed to be a combination Four Seasons luxury resort, conference center and nutrition-counseling school.

In the event you never meet Murdock in person, it is reported he likes to suggest Dole's Encyclopedia of Foods to people he does meet -- just in case you are curious what a man who plans to live to be 125 recommends as a good read.