This year alone, 215,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. And sadly, not all of them will be treated equally.

Researchers reported last Tuesday that breast cancer patients who are either obese or poor are more likely to receive lower doses of chemotherapy. This might be why some women relapse and others do not, according to the researchers whose findings appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

This treatment discrepancy seems to stem from doctors who mean well and want to save certain women from severe side effects of chemotherapy. Doctors may be under-dosing obese patients, for example, because a larger dose based on weight could lead to worse side effects. There is no evidence this is true, however.

As for socioeconomic status, researchers report doctors are assuming less-educated patients won't stick with a tough course of treatment -- and so they prescribe less, in hopes patients will complete the regimen.

Researchers found that severely obese women were four times more likely to get less chemotherapy than they need. Women with less than a high school education were three times more likely to receive low doses of chemotherapy. And women living in the South were almost six times more likely to come up short on the drugs they need to save their lives.

"We have new therapies and cures out there for many forms of cancer and sadly, sometimes we're not curing people because they are not getting the full doses that should be standard," says Dr. Gary Lyman who led the study at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York.

"I have a mammogram on Friday," I told my husband just two days before the test I will receive every six months for the rest of my life. The test I should not have even needed for another four years, when I hit the age of 40. The test that helped find a cancerous lump in my breast two years ago and will hopefully catch any future lumps in enough time to save my life.

The mammogram. It's a big test that hinges on one moment of disclosure from the technician who performs the procedure. The disclosure -- everything is fine or the doctor would like to see you -- predicts whether or not life goes on normally or is derailed by uncertainty. Mammograms are a big deal.

"Are you worried?" my husband asked after my announcement. I thought for a moment and then replied, "No."

For some reason, I am not worried about this mammogram. Perhaps it's because I am monitored so regularly by the medical establishment and I'm confident anything suspicious in my breasts will be caught early and treated successfully. Perhaps the routine of it all makes mammograms not so eventful anymore. Maybe I'm just coping better with the seriousness of it all, and mammograms have become one more mundane appointment that requires my presence.

It doesn't matter really. What matters is that I am calm about my mammogram, that I am not giving it serious thought, that I am free of anxiety.

What matters is that I am not worried.

I was in the emergency room the other night with my three-year-old who was experiencing a mysterious leg pain that resulted from a bad case of strep throat. It wasn't serious enough to warrant swift movement from the waiting room to an actual room and we sat in a holding pattern with a crowd of other patients, some of whom were still waiting after Danny had been treated and released. I was told patients are served in the order in which they arrive but also according to the seriousness of their complaints -- which takes me back to the night I was in the ER with a fever, headache, sore throat, and sore gums. The night I was given a mask and was immediately escorted from the waiting room to a private room where doctors and nurses treated me for neutropenia -- a condition caused by chemotherapy and marked by a drop in neutrophil levels, a condition that puts chemotherapy patients at great risk for infection. This was the second time I went to the hospital for neutropenia. Both times I was admitted and treated for five days.

And so sitting in the ER reminded me about how serious chemotherapy side effects can be. And it makes me want to caution all chemotherapy patients to never dismiss the signs that the body is suffering -- to never tough it out with the hope that a good night's sleep or a few days rest will straighten everything out. Because it may not -- and the end result may be tragic.

All chemotherapy patients should be briefed by their medical teams about when to call for medical assistance. For me, a temperature of 100.4 was the magic call-for-help signal. And twice, I called for help -- once in the middle of the night. But any symptoms , and definitely a combination of symptoms, are cause enough for a simple phone call. So don't delay. Don't excuse warning signs that your body is struggling. Don't second-guess your decision to notify a medical professional about your symptoms. Just call. It could save your life.

We recently posted Elephant Man drug trial victim showing signs of cancer, about a horrific ordeal involving six healthy young men who volunteered at Northwick Park Hospital, in London as participants in a clinical trial for a drug called TGN1412, designed to treat leukemia, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

According to the men, they were told by doctors there would be no serious short-term or long-term side effects from participating in the drug trial. That wasn't the case. The participants were misled regarding the safety of the experimental drug -- everything went terribly wrong -- and one of the six men has now been told he is showing signs of cancer.

Another egregious event has occurred on the other side of the pond, according to news of an allegation made by a woman who claims she was used as an experimental cancer drug guinea pig without consent.

The story began last year when Trelene Cave was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Treated at Epsom General Hospital and the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, she was later sent to St George's Hospital for a second opinion before undergoing an operation. The trouble begins when St George's Hospital doctors allegedly treated Cave with Scotroc4, an experimental cancer drug, without her informed consent. She developed a blood clot and almost died.

Cave states in the news report that, "I trusted them totally. Nobody discussed it with me. I just can't understand it."

St George's Healthcare Trust has apologized to her and her husband Norman for the incident. An investigation has been called for into whether St George's Hospital doctors side-stepped ethical guidelines in treating Cave without her knowledge.

Thanks to Joel Arellano of Autoblog for this story tip!

It seems like common sense to me -- that lifestyle choices can affect a person's risk for contracting cancer -- but apparently, many people are not aware of this. Or they are aware but are not heeding the advice that might just save them from this life-threatening disease. According to Carolyn "Bo" Aldige, president of the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation, in Alexandria, Va., it's not undiscovered treatments and therapies that are key to fighting off cancer -- it's likely that the toll cancer takes can be reduced by lifestyle changes and routine screenings. Aldige reports that nearly half of all cancer deaths are preventable. And she urges us to consider these facts.

• Smoking is the most preventable cause of death in the United States and causes nearly one in five deaths, killing about 438,000 Americans each year. Yet 45 million adults still smoke -- 23 percent of them men and 19 percent of them women.
• Poor nutrition, inactivity, and obesity account for one in three of the 564,830 deaths from all cancers. Experts say that excess calories cause mutations that start genes traveling down pathways that cause cells to divide out of control -- and that's what cancer is. According to Aldige, if each person could magically acquire the perfect body mass index, there would be a whole lot less colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers.
• It requires little time and not much discomfort for certain screenings that can detect cancer at an early enough stage that it can be successfully treated. There are already screenings for breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, testicular cancer, cervical cancer, and skin cancer. And soon, there may be a simple screening for lung cancer too.
• A diet rich in nutrients and vitamin supplements helps maintain health and prevent cancer.

There are some highly effective defenses against cancer -- but they require some attention and effort on the part of each individual. Not everyone will make health-conscious choices -- some for reasons out of their control (lack of access to screenings, for example) and some for reasons I personally do not understand. But maybe that's because I have already had cancer and I know that I don't ever wish for it to return. So for that reason alone, I plan to adhere to the considerations listed above. It seems like common sense to me.

Diana Dyer was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer, when she was six months old. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 34. She was diagnosed with a second breast cancer ten years after the first. Each cancer was treated by conventional medicine and included combinations of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. But because her cancer kept returning, Diana realized that for her, something other then treatment was necessary to sustain her through a long life. So she considered a healthy recipe for living -- a blend of traditional medicine and alternative methods too -- and she implemented a holistic approach to healing into her personal world. She has not had a recurrence since 1995 -- and she credits this to the changes she's made in her life. She has tipped the scales in her favor, she believes, and she shares her approach with others who want to begin a journey toward recovery and healing after cancer.

Young women sometimes are dismissed when they pursue medical attention for suspicious lumps, bumps, pains, or changes in their breasts -- because breast cancer is not so common in young women and medical professionals may assume that breast cancer is not the culprit for the complaints brought before them by young women. But young women do get breast cancer -- I did at age 34 -- and many times, the tumors found in young breasts are more aggressive than those that appear for older women. So it is critical that young women seek medical attention for anything out-of-the-ordinary. And it is critical that doctors respond with urgency so that breast cancer in young women can be detected early -- and treated appropriately.