Hope is a complex concept and one that is often misunderstood by many people including health care professionals. Many people tend to interchange the terms of wishing, optimism, and hope, but the three have significant differences.

Wishing is usually specific in that you wish for something you desire. It is positive in nature. Optimism emphasizes the positive aspects of a situation and is considered to be a positive trait. Both of these have places in our lives but to live with a disease like cancer and to get through treatments, navigate health care systems, and to overcome society's negative views about cancer as a death sentence, a person must have a strong sense of hope.

In stumbling upon an article published by the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship written by Elizabeth J. Clark, PhD entitled "You Have The Right To Be Hopeful", I realized that without this inner strength, this determined will power, this drive, that hope creates, there would be a lot less survivors in this disease. It is a good read and I am passing along the link to the free PDF file for others to enjoy and learn from.

1. Hope constitutes an essential experience in the human condition.
2. Hope means desirability of personal survival and the ability of the individual to exert a degree of influence on the surrounding world.
3. Hope is necessary for healthy coping.
4. Hope is a cognitive affective resource that is a psychological asset.
5. Hope is a mental willpower and is a sense of mental energy that helps move a person toward a goal.

Metastatic brain tumors -- tumors that spread from a cancer in another area of the body -- are among the worst tumors and will plague about 200,000 people in the United States every year. But once considered a death sentence, these brain tumors -- primarily those one centimeter in size or less -- can now be treated with a breakthrough radiation technique launched at the University of Florida College of Medicine. This new state-of-the-art radiosurgery device for noninvasive, outpatient treatment is more precise and more powerful than previous methods of treatment. Approved by the FDA in June, this Trilogy Tx system makes traditional surgery unnecessary for many patients. Dr. William Friedman, chairman for the department of neurosurgery at UF and one of two professors who developed and patented seven components of this system over the past 20 years, says, "I'm a surgeon, but if you can provide an outpatient, noninvasive treatment that requires no anesthesia, has extremely high cure rates, and very low complication rates, the question is: Why do surgery?"

Patients of this treatment are fitted with a head ring that prevents the their heads from moving while the Trilogy machine rotates to deliver radiation beams from many angles. While traditional radiation is given every day, Monday through Friday, for six weeks, the Trilogy Tx requires one single treatment that lasts for 15 minutes. It's comparable in cost to standard radition, is cheaper than surgery, and is typically covered by insurance. And it works -- which is the best selling feature, I think.

One of the first books I read after my breast cancer diagnosis was issued in hardback in 1986 -- 20 years ago -- and then was published again and reissued and reprinted in 1990, 1998, and 2002.While the cover has changed and perhaps some wording too, the message in this book -- Love, Medicine, & Miracles by Bernie S. Siegel, M.D. -- remains unchanged.  And it is inside the covers of this book that I keep learning that I have the capacity and power to become an exceptional patient -- despite the fact that I've been faced with a life-shattering diagnosis of cancer.