Though the prom is mostly a distant memory for me, I can recall with vivid detail the feeling that it was the crowning achievement of my life and though I've since had much more definitive moments, at that time it was everything. As someone who had a pretty typical upbringing, I can't imagine what it would be like going through that stage of teenage angst with cancer. My biggest problem was finding a dress, while others are wondering how they will get through the night after a round of chemo.

I find this story of a group of teens with cancer and their opportunity to attend the prom inspiring and simultaneuosly heartwarming and heartbreaking. Armed with wheelchairs and life-saving machines, they posed for pictures, danced and mingled with fellow cancer survivors, and for one night at least they had a chance at normalcy, a chance to worry about finding a dance partner and keeping their make-up fresh instead of worrying about the fight for their life.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that girls see a gynecologist for the first time between the ages of 13 and 15. While this visit does not normally include a pelvic exam, it does jump-start a relationship that should be on-going for the duration of a woman's life.

This first visit is likely to include a discussion about menstruation, sexuality, and healthy lifestyle habits -- and may even involve education about the newly FDA-approved cervical cancer vaccine, recommended for females ages 9 to 26.

According to the American Cancer Society, all women should begin receiving pelvic exams for purposes of cervical cancer screening within three years after the onset of vaginal intercourse and no later than age 21. Testing should be done every year with the regular Pap test or every two years using the newer liquid-based Pap test.

To honor and support former 1995 Hooters Calendar Cover Girl, Kelly Jo Dowd, who is battling a recurrence of breast cancer that has spread to her organs and bones -- during the 10th Annual Hooters International Swimsuit Pageant in Las Vegas, Hooters gave her a check for $135,000 and announced a $1 million dollar breast cancer research grant in her name through the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

Dowd, who is 40, successfully went into remission the first time she was diagnosed with breast cancer, only to have the cancer return, is the only woman to climb Hooters restaurant chain's corporate ladder from waitress, to manager, and to general manager. She is also the proud mother of golfing teen phenom Dakoda Dowd.

The V Foundation was launched during the last year of NC State basketball coach and ESPN broadcaster Jim Valvano's life, when he was diagnosed with metastatic adenocarcinoma, and told he had a year to live. He spent the last year as an advocate in raising cancer awareness by sharing his personal experience as someone facing life and death with cancer. Valvano's message in the fight against cancer was "Don't Give Up ... Don't Ever Give Up!"

Dowd is fighting for her life, and Hooters has stepped in to help her, and other women facing breast cancer and fighting for their lives, in never giving up in the battle.

When you are in a chat room, belong to an email discussion list, or for that matter, read a blog, you cannot be certain all of the time the other person is who they are representing themselves to be, and on some occasions, they are frauds with evil intent.

When it comes to blogs in the cancer community, given time in reading the blog, I have found most people are who they say they are -- but when it comes to chat rooms, there is a higher probability that the identity of the participant could be different than the person is in real life.

In Leeds Today, a news story has been published exposing a pervert who pretended to be a boy named Ricky with cancer, for the purposes of luring a teenage girl into a sexual encounter. Ricky was really a 45-year-old married man named Glen Marwood. But the 17-year-old girl believed his chat room story and began to offer emotional support and encouragement as Ricky went through cancer treatment. She became attached to Ricky and felt the relationship was developing romantically. Which is what Marwood was hoping and had planned.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, has written a personal account of her breast cancer diagnosis, treatments and recovery in a new book called Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength From Friends and Strangers.

During the presidential campaign, Elizabeth was in Wisconsin twelve days before Election Day 2004 when she found the lump in her breast. Few people knew of the possible breast cancer diagnosis to come, and the day John Kerry conceded the election to Bush, she was driven directly to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for a biopsy. She began cancer treatment almost immediately after the confirmation of breast cancer.

Women who smoke are twice as likely than men to be diagnosed with lung cancer but less likely to die from the disease.

This is the result of a study done by New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center researchers who cannot explain why women who smoke are at greater risk for lung cancer -- only that this is the conclusion of the research data.

As a result, they are recommending women who smoke be tested earlier and more frequently for lung cancer. In addition, they feel earlier intervention in warning campaigns about smoking and smoking cessation programs should be made available to women at a younger age -- ideally when they are still teens.

Early intervention is always a good idea. Even if you only reach some of the minds of young women and prevent them from starting a habit with the potential to kill them, it's worth the effort. Here's the problem as I see it. Unless I am wrong, and missed something, there is no really great method to screen for the earliest stage of lung cancer.

The beauty of blogs and small newspapers. If you want to read interesting reporting, take the road less traveled where writers are allowed to follow the compass to places large corporate media does not seem to venture.

In Daily News Central's FDA's Ok of Cervical Cancer Vaccine May Spawn Multibillion Dollar Market is an excellent piece explaining all the major participants and motives behind the recently approved cervical cancer vaccine. While no one expects that altruism is ever at play when it comes to business, understanding the reasoning behind the actions at least gives all the rest of us a chance to understand the brouhaha this particular cancer vaccine has, and will continue, to create.

While GlaxoSmithKline has a cervical cancer vaccine they hope will be approved and available next year, Merck is first out of the gate with the FDA approval of Gardasil. The company needs this to be a success after taking a financial hit a few years ago over its drug Vioxx, a pain pill that was widely-prescribed and later withdrawn from the market over safety concerns.

In the last year, Merck has quietly spent an estimated $1 million dollars launching the Tell Someone campaign and was connected to the Make the Connection campaign, both designed to raise a general public awareness and hopefully to ease the concerns of the evangelical Christian opposition they anticipated over a cancer vaccine so closely linked to sexual activity and teenage girls. The cancer vaccine works for girls who are virgins, who are not yet sexually active. You can see the potential for religious opposition considering their only stand on prevention in general when it comes to sex is to instruct teens not to have sex.

On June 29, immunization experts at the CDC will hold a meeting to decide if the new cervical cancer vaccine should be added to a list of mandatory vaccines administered to the youth in this country. Congress will have a vote on adding the cancer vaccine to immunization programs, and the health officials in each state will decide if the new vaccine will be required. The battle over a sexually-transmitted cancer and cancer prevention for virgins has just begun.

That there is an effective cervical cancer vaccine about to hit the market is encouraging news. Any successful and safe cancer prevention method is good news. Recently, a public service announcement, PSA, has been airing on television attempting to raise awareness about the virus that can lead to cervical cancer. The PSA I am seeing is coming from Merck, one of the drug companies that will be selling the vaccine. Unless I am mistaken, not once does the PSA mention the vaccine -- only the virus associated with cervical cancer. I believe this is intentional. I believe the drug company might be anticipating a resistance from the parents of teenage daughters to the vaccine based on ethical and moral grounds. If I were a drug company, I would quickly and reasonably decide to try to keep the vaccine above the fray of ethical and moral objections by promoting education about the virus.

Vaccines are a preventative measure against virus, not a treatment for after-exposure to a virus. As such, the ideal population to reach with a cervical cancer vaccine that protects against the sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus, HPV, will be teenage girls before they become sexually active. I predict it is going to be a controversial issue and debate where sexual activity of teenage girls becomes the focal point and not the potentially life-saving cancer prevention vaccine. I am betting the current awareness-raising ad campaign from the drug company in the virus link to cervical cancer is an attempt to minimize the debate with an educational approach. That's my hunch.