My friend and fellow young breast cancer survivor has received a great honor to serve as one of the 55 delegates representing breast cancer advocates worldwide at Ignite the Promise: Global Advocate Summit in Hungary.

I'm so proud of you Deb!

This press release says it all:

Deb Kirkland, of Baltimore, MD, has been selected to serve as one of 55 delegates representing breast cancer advocates worldwide at "Ignite the Promise: Global Advocate Summit" in Budapest, Hungary, Sept. 29-30, 2007.

Organized by Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world's largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists, the summit will pair the 25 U.S. breast cancer advocates with their counterparts from 30 countries. The overarching goals for holding this international summit are to elevate the dialogue on breast cancer's global impact and to share strategies used to combat breast cancer in the delegates' local communities

"Each year, more than 1 million women worldwide receive a breast cancer diagnosis," said Nancy G. Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. "The need to provide these women-regardless of race, nationality, or socioeconomic status-an equal opportunity to beat a breast cancer diagnosis has never been greater. This summit will enable advocates to share outreach tactics that have been implemented in the U.S. and elsewhere to meet our collective goal of saving lives and ending breast cancer forever."

Duncan Chessell, 35, is a professional mountaineer and adventurer. He is the only South Australian to have reached the top of Mt. Everest. He reached the summit in 2001 but sadly during the expedition it claimed the life of his friend Mark Auricht, 37.

This time he took on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Duncan led a team of Australian cancer survivors to the top of the mountain in Africa. The expedition marks the twenty first birthday of the cancer support group CanTeen. The climbing group included a number of people who were celebrating five years of being cancer free.

CanTeen is a New Zealand organization supporting young people living with cancer. It was established to ensure that no young person in New Zealand will have to face cancer alone.

It may be possible to learn happiness -- like we might learn to cook or learn to dance -- by merely taking a class. Some refute this idea and believe you can't actually pursue happiness. You either have it or you don't. But some psychologists are embracing a whole new approach to psychology -- they call it positive psychology -- and they say it focuses on training the mind to focus on the past as very positive. It's completely different from traditional psychology where time is spent trying to determine why someone is so horribly sad. This movement, invented by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman in 1998 when he was president of the American Psychological Association, provides a scientific validated set of exercises -- known as interventions -- that lead happiness seekers to their ultimate destination.

Four-time Iditarod champion Susan Butcher died Saturday of complications from a recent bone marrow transplant. Her health concerns began three years ago when she was diagnosed with polycythemia vera -- a rare disease that causes bone marrow to produce excess blood. Then last winter, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Her subsequent bone marrow transplant on May 16 cleared her system of cancer. But she developed graft-versus-host disease -- where transplanted cells start attacking the digestive system. A fever, a change in her potassium level, and a trip to intensive care prompted her husband to write on his blog Friday of her condition. He reported that if she remained stable, she would return to her previous hospital room and would work on recovering. But sadly, Butcher did not recover.

Butcher dominated the 1,100-mile sled-dog race from Anchorage to Nome in the late 1980s and brought national attention to the grueling competition. She won the 1986 race and became the second female champion -- and then won again in 1987, 1988, and 1990. She finished in the top four through 1993. Butcher also made headlines in 1979 when she helped drive the first sled-dog team to the 20,320-foot summit of Mount McKinley -- the highest peak in North America.

Butcher, who ran her last Iditarod in 1994, grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was married with two daughters -- ages 10 and five. Butcher was 51 years old.

Listening and Learning Together: Building a Bridge of Trust, is the first-ever Summit to assemble cancer advocates with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and other National Institutes of Health (NIH) leaders taking place in Bethesda, Maryland . NCI Director's Consumer Liaison Group (DCLGO) will host this event on the campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where representatives from all segments of the cancer community will convene to give their constituents a strong voice and to help shape future interaction and collaboration between the National Cancer Institute and the community. The event is June 19–20 and will offer a unique opportunity for interaction and candid conversation with each other and with NCI and NIH leaders.

Registration and check in is at 8:00am at the Natcher Building Foyer. A tour of the campus will take place from 8:30am to Noon and the official opening ceremony will begin at 1:00pm in the Main Auditorium on the lower level of the Natcher Conference Center. For more information on the summit contact Mr. James Hadley the Advocacy Program Manager at the National Cancer Institute Office of Liaison Activities.