I have a bucket of drugs in one of my kitchen cabinets, stored way up high and out of the reach of two busy little boys. For a short time during my breast cancer treatment I reached for this container every day. Lately, though, I have little use for this medley of medication. There are some things I use -- like cough medicine made for little people and ibuprofen for the occasional headache -- but mostly, we are a drug-free household. So really, I don't need much of what I'm storing in that cabinet. Much of it is so old, in fact, it has probably expired.

Every once in a while, we should all take a tour through our medicine cabinets and peek at the expiration dates on our prescriptions and over-the-counter bottles. If anything is expired, toss it! Expired medications do not work. In some cases, they can be toxic if consumed after their deadline dates.

To find out more about the shelf life of common medicine cabinet products, click here. To learn more about safely disposing of expired medications, click here.

In an interview with the Globe, We're on the way to making cancer a chronic but tolerable disease, one of the leading oncology experts in the US, John Hopkins Medical Institution cancer researcher David Sidransky, states that we are undergoing a profound change in the way cancer is thought of -- from a deadly disease to a chronic one that will be treated much the same as diabetes or heart disease is currently managed.

With individualized treatments and new drugs, Dr Sidransky predicts that chemotherapy dosages can be reduced and in some cases, not needed as a part of cancer treatment. When asked what he thought chemotherapy drug manufacturers reaction to this might be, he explained that patents on most chemotherapy drugs have already expired, and these companies are working on the next generation of cancer treatments -- such as drugs to manipulate the immune system.

Most of the interview focus is on business and the development of Israel's biotechnology industry, and it is a peek into the potential future of cancer treatments. The bottom line is cancer treatment is driven by the business of drug companies. Paying attention to what they are talking about and what direction they are headed gives us an idea what we can expect in new treatments.

Several boxes containing injections of Neulasta have lined the bottom of my refrigerator for more than a year. They are left-overs from chemotherapy -- from a time when one needle pierced the skin on my arm after each chemo treatment to keep my blood counts in a safe range. I've looked at them day after day after day, and I've allowed them to sit in the same exact spot for all this time. But today, they are in the trash -- not because I made a conscious choice to throw them away but because water spilled all over the inside of my refrigerator and left them soggy and damaged. Surely I would not have used them in this condition, I thought -- so I tossed them. But really, I would not have used them anyway. They were old -- probably past their expiration date -- and I am not receiving chemotherapy anymore. I had absolutely no use for them. But I kept them for safety or comfort or some other impractical reason -- for the same reason I keep a basket full of old medication in my kitchen cupboard. It's all cancer-related -- most of it never touched because I don't really like taking medication, even when necessary. So this stock-piling tendency defies all logic for me. Until today -- when part of my past sits in a white trash bag, ready for the curb, and the rest of it is soon to be trashed. So I can continue moving forward. Away from cancer. For good.