Lung cancer: Overlooked, underfunded

January 9, 2007

When researchers announced a few weeks ago that rates for breast cancer had dropped a staggering 7 percent between 2002 and 2003, the news was hailed by an advocacy movement that has fought tirelessly in the past few decades to raise awareness and money for a cure.

Recent columns

• Dark thoughts intrude on a season of light

  December 26, 2006

  This time of year, the world is awash in New Year's resolutions. People hoping to lose weight, to get a better job, or to be a better mother, father, son or daughter.

• 'Bald Chicks Rule' and the other laughs

  December 19, 2006

  My friend Amy routinely uses humor to diminish the angst of going to see her cancer doctor. During an exam one day when he asked her to remove her shirt, she replied, deadpan:

• Cost of cancer is a hard pill to swallow

  December 12, 2006

  The pills I hoped would help save my life were small and brown. There were 30 of them, all told, and they looked like Advil.

• Secrets from the alternate universe

  December 5, 2006

  I've never understood the people who insist that getting cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them. I could have done without this so-called epiphany in my life. My family and friends could have as well.

• Eating well for strength of body and soul

  November 14, 2006

  Getting off the phone that day with my doctor, I did what any self-respecting person would do after finding out her cancer had returned.

• Patient and pet to the rescue

  October 31, 2006

  I knew I was in love the first time I saw him. He barely had any hair and walked with a slight limp. When I looked into his brown eyes, he acted as if he wanted to crawl under a table. I always seem to go for the complicated ones.

• TWA Flight 800: 10 years later

  July 16, 2006

  If disaster had a scrapbook, it would be a tiny bayside community 70 miles east of New York City. Here, a decade after Flight 800 rained fire and debris into the Atlantic off the South Shore of Long Island, American flags still flutter lazily on people's front lawns in Moriches, and a granite memorial sits at the entrance to Mt. Pleasant Cemetery.

• Lethal oversight in group homes?

  February 24, 2006

  Charles Psoinas staggered down the stairs in the Garden Place Community Residence in West Hempstead, bleeding profusely from wounds to his chest and neck after he was stabbed with a 6-inch pocketknife.

• Guatemala faces child welfare crisis

  October 23, 2005

  When the trees, boulders and mud cascaded down the side of the volcano and into the village of Panabaj about three hours west of here, the children at first were terrified by the noise.

• Putting focus on foster kids

  October 16, 2005

  He uses a metal walker and leg braces to get around, but in the black-and-white photograph taken by Marjorie Pillar, one of the most striking things about Anthony is a grin that stretches toward infinity.

• Childhood on hold

  June 20, 2001

  Thomas McCroy, 11, keeps the scooter he got for Christmas under his bed at the HELP Suffolk homeless shelter in Bellport where he's lived for the past four months.