Elizabeth Edwards has been told the metastatic cancer found in her bones is considered stage four. And it's treatable. But not curable.

Tricky stuff -- all this cancer terminology -- and a little hard to fully comprehend.

I saw Sheryl Crow talking with Maria Shriver and Dr. Susan Love on Larry's King's CNN program the other night. Crow says her breast cancer was curable -- it was teeny tiny and had not spread and required a lumpectomy and radiation, but not chemotherapy. "I'm the walking poster child for early detection," she said. Her cancer was caught and treated swiftly. She is cured. Theoretically.

Can Crow's cancer still return? Yep.

We just aren't sure at the time of one cancer discovery if these deadly cells have drifted away from the main site and will later show up elsewhere, explained Dr. Love. All predictions would have Crow living a long life free of cancer. But they may have had Edwards in the same boat just two years ago when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer.

So now Edwards' cancer is not curable. It is treatable. And this is a bit easier to understand. Her cancer will never go away. But doctors can keep it at bay. And Love says they can even make it better. But there is no cure for what Edwards has. So she will live with cancer for the rest of her life.

I guess curable means: the cancer is gone and we hope it never comes back. And treatable means: the cancer is not gone and will never be gone but we will treat it for as long as we can.

I think I get it.

It seems screening for lung cancer doesn't save lives and it doesn't prevent advanced disease. But it does lead to potentially unnecessary and harmful treatment.

This isn't the final word on the use of CT scans to screen smokers and former smokers for the disease. But right now, the hope some experts had for the special X-rays to detect tiny lung abnormalities has been diminished by a large study that is still in the works. And until conclusive evidence says the screening is useful, the American Cancer Society will not endorse the test.

While CT screening did increase diagnosis and treatment -- those screened were three times more likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer and 10 times more likely to have lung surgery than predicted -- study co-author Dr. Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York says, "We don't see a trace of evidence that a single life was saved, that a single case of advanced cancer was avoided."

And because CT scanning led to more biopsies and surgeries, patients were put at risk for complications such as lung puncture, bleeding, and infection, according to Bach, whose work is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"Getting screened for lung cancer with CT scanning is not only unproven, it's potentially a risky endeavor," he said.

Until an effective screening tool emerges -- possibly still years away -- experts say there is one surefire way to protect yourself from lung cancer. Stop smoking.

Scientists from Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing a tiny implant that will allow doctors to see what's happening with tumors from the inside out.

If all proceeds according to plan, doctors will one day be implanting tiny sensors inside tumors to determine whether or not cancer drugs are shrinking the tumors. The sensors will also determine whether or not tumors are growing.

Cancer specialists have long wished for better methods of measuring the success of drugs. While blood tests can show if a drug has reached the bloodstream, they don't reveal much about the tumor itself. This small silicone cube, no bigger than two millimeters on each side and embedded in a tumor or lymph node, would remain in the body throughout treatment while essentially broadcasting what's going on inside the tumor.

MIT scientists hope to begin animal experiments within months. Their goal is to one day make the implant as thin as the pieces of led used in mechanical pencils.

This research, funded by the National Cancer Institute, is part of a long-term project to make medical technologies that will cure cancer. It's all part of journey toward complete targeted cancer treatment. And this little implant will have the power to communicate whether or not these treatments are working.

We can have teeny tiny self-contained cancers throughout our body and not know it. We can have cancer that the body has effectively stopped. Small undetected tumors that start as cancer but never develop on or spread. This is not written to cause alarm, only to illuminate that cancer might be happening much more often than anyone normally suspects, and in many cases, the body is capable of protecting us from tumor growth and spread.

Skin moles may hold clues to treating cancer, is an excellent must-read article for anyone interested in understanding of how prevalent and self-contained cancer might be for many of us.

For example, moles are cancerous tumors that start but somehow stop, never to become anything other than a mole. As Gina Kolata explains in her article, "Each mole is a tumor of pigment cells that started on a path to cancer and then stopped. The cells do not divide again. A mole is an incipient cancer that halted in its tracks."

The intriguing phenomenon of moles and other small tumors in the body that never go on to amount to anything threatening are being studied by scientists because it appears these little tumors that start as cancer and stop have not received much attention in the past. Dr. David Fisher, the director of the melanoma program at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, states, "I would bet my last penny that our bodies are riddled with these things."

It gives the reader pause to consider how marvelous the body is at normally taking care of itself that if moles and little tumors are cancers contained. Understanding the mechanisms behind how a body makes that happen could open a wider door into effective cancer treatments and cure. Please read Skin moles may hold clues to treating cancer for more detail.