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.

What is fundamentally missing in a human being that could stoop so pathetically low as to tell people his child has cancer and then later tell them his child died from cancer -- when none of it is true? I know, innocent until proven guilty but the way things are stacking up in this story, it does appear Michael Ruffalo told a new employer his 3-year-old son had cancer, spent months reporting on his child's failing health and then topped it off by announcing the death of his son.

Ruffalo got caught in the lie when the Atlanta-based software firm Lancope Inc., tried to send flowers to the funeral. The fake funeral. "When you hear of somebody's child being ill and ultimately the child dying, you feel for that person," said Lancope's chief financial officer, David Cocchiara, whose company put Ruffalo on paid leave within weeks of hiring him because of his son's cancer diagnosis.

To absolutely make matters worse, if that is possible, Ruffalo has done this before with a previous employer. EncryptX Corp., an e-mail security company, said that shortly after hiring Ruffalo they got an e-mail about his son. "We tried to send flowers to the funeral home and they said we never heard of him." EncryptX wrote off the $21,464 dollars they paid him as a bad experience.

Lancope Inc. is suing Ruffalo.