The one constant thing that gives people fighting cancer hope is the continued support of friends and family. Phone calls, emails, a surprise or planned visit at the door that has a big hug on the other side, a held hand over coffee or tea, or sitting patiently by their side as they go in for treatments. When that support falls by the wayside, it makes the determination to fight this disease or any other less worth the effort. In my humble opinion as someone fighting cancer, we sometimes fight harder to overcome disease for others more than ourselves. Because it is in their caring and the will in their eyes that gives us a much brighter hope than we find in ourselves. It is the lack of support or caring that sets off an internal depression that makes it ten times harder to find the will to fight. People seem to find it easier to hug a tree than a human. Try to imagine if you will sitting in a house alone and thinking about a disease that can run rampant through your body. It is hard to imagine and something that we do not want to think about. Yet many many people face that struggle every day of their lives.

So if you haven't reached out to someone you know, a neighbor, a friend, someone in your church or where you work, or even a family member that is struggling with cancer or any other disease, then find it in your heart to do so. It will make a difference. And if you have reached out to someone once or even twice, know that once is not enough and twice is not enough. No matter how much you think you are being a nuisance, that constant reminder of love and support is 95 percent of your friend's battle. The old saying "You never know who your true friends are until you go through a crisis and see who stands by our side" is very very true. So go stand by someone's side today, tomorrow, and for many days to come to offer support and encourage strength until their fight is successful. Even a phone call goes a long long way.

For those of you who stay in touch with me by phone and emails and that come knocking on my door in this time of need, I thank you very much for giving me the strength and will to survive.

Survivorship is the new cancer buzz word -- and what an important word it is. Once left to each individual to define, manage, and transcend, survivorship is now recognized as a distinct phase of cancer recovery -- just as important, and maybe even more so, than diagnosis and treatment.

Linda Griggs, a 13-year breast cancer survivor, clearly remembers the day her chemotherapy ended. With her therapy complete, her hair growing back, and her medical team sending her off to have a nice life, she thought she'd be fine. But she wasn't.

Three months after her last dose of chemotherapy, Griggs was depressed, consumed with worry about how her cancer might come back. And she realized that the end of treatment is not really the end. It's just the beginning.

Griggs told her doctor about her anxiety, about how she was just trying to make it to her next three-month-check up. When her doctor told her, "that's not living," something clicked for Griggs who instantly decided to start living -- really living.

Surviving is about self-nurturing, says Griggs, who has created a kit to help others survive cancer. On her website, she writes that there are a couple of other breast cancer survivor kits out there -- containing tissues, herbal teas, meditation tapes, medical appointment books, and breast cancer resource materials.

"This is not that," she says of her kit that focuses on the emotional upheaval cancer creates.

Griggs' kit is full of hands-on creative materials -- like an inner child notebook, complete with magic markers for journaling and expressing emotions. If you're angry, you can write down angry thoughts. If you're sad, write what makes you sad. Save the pages, tear them up, burn them, do what you wish -- but allow your emotions to flow, Griggs says.

The kit also includes a wooden box with instructions on how to create a healing shrine, a copy of Griggs' non-fiction account of the first five years of her cancer journey, and so much more.

Griggs, who also teaches healing workshops, guides others to understand cancer as a hero's quest. She says when something happens to us -- death, divorce, disease -- we are receiving a call to adventure. All bet's are off. We must start fresh, gather our spirit guides, collect ourselves, dive into the underworld, overcome, and then emerge full of wisdom of growth.

Griggs has emerged -- full of her own wisdom and growth. She is a hero -- on a quest to help others survive a disease that threw her way off track for way too long.

Last week, I watched actress Emma Thompson portray with real power a life derailed by cancer in the 2001 HBO screen adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Wit by Margaret Edson.

I watched the movie, on DVD and in the privacy of my own home, almost six years after it was released -- and two years after my own cancer derailment. I like the order in which it all happened -- having cancer and then watching the movie, rather than watching the movie and then having cancer.

Thompson's portrayal of Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., professor of 17th-century English poetry, and expert on the sonnets of John Donne, was entirely real -- so real I sometimes felt I was reliving my own journey with cancer.

The cold, impersonal delivery of Bearing's treatment plan -- eight high-dose, experimental chemotherapy treatments taken over the course of eight months for stage-four metastatic ovarian cancer, an aggressive and advanced form -- reminded me of the matter-of-fact manner in which doctors speak to patients, the manner in which my own oncologist spoke to me, void of compassion and warmth and concern.

The on-going sterile and clinical interactions Bearing encounters from doctors, technicians, nurses, and medical students allowed me to appreciate the very few caring souls who crossed my medical path.

Bearing resolves to become a scholar on cancer, just as she has on Donne. And while I am no Ph.D. scholar, I did study cancer, sometimes to a fault, in order to acquire some sort of control over what was happening to me.

Chemotherapy makes Bearing sick. It made me sick too. Chemotherapy lands Bearing in hospital isolation. It landed me there too. Cancer scares Bearing. It scared me too.

Sometimes, cancer -- the return of cancer -- still scares me. But mostly, I am happy to be alive, happy to be watching movies that authentically capture the reality of cancer, movies that make me proud to have overcome what Bearing's doctor calls an insidious disease.

Sadly, another cancer death has occurred -- this one caused by leukemia and ending the life of Arthur Lee. Lee, eccentric singer and guitarist with the 1960s rock band Love, died Thursday at the age of 61. His death was shocking to many who knew him because he had the ability to bounce back from just about everything. Leukemia was usually no exception. But recently, Lee, who was diagnosed this year with acute myeloid leukemia, was not faring well after three rounds of chemotherapy failed. And despite a bone marrow transplant using stem cells from an umbilical cord -- the first of its kind for an adult in Tennessee -- Lee could not overcome cancer.

Lee, a Memphis native, called himself "the first so-called black hippie." In 1965, he formed Love -- the first multiracial rock band of the psychedelic era -- and his groundbreaking albums featured a blend of folk rock, blues, and early punk. Lee is remembered for his hit singles My Little Red Book and Revelation, for influencing bands like Led Zeppelin and Echo, and for spending six years in prison during the 1990s for firing a pistol into the air.

After his release from prison in 2001, Lee formed a new version of Love and performed in Europe and North America. And then others -- like former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant -- performed for him this June in benefit concerts to raise money to help Lee with his medical bills.

Arthur Lee died in at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis -- with his wife Diane at his side.

My brother-in-law came up to me tonight with his iPod and handed me his headsets. A cue to put them on, I guessed -- and so I did. A song played and right away I liked what I heard. It was the exact type of music I like -- with a grungy, rock kind of sound. I figured Jack knows what I like and was sharing a new song with me. Which he was -- but there was something more to it. It wasn't just a good song -- it was a good song about cancer, with a message of hope and strength and living through the struggles of a life that has been shaken. Written by Scott Leger of the Austin-based band wideawake, Maybe Tonight, Maybe Tomorrow is dedicated to the millions of people affected by cancer -- those who have lost, those who have survived, those who fight and volunteer and support and research and raise awareness and give and inspire. And for those without cancer too really. For anyone who is faced with forces that threaten the most precious of assets -- time.