Cancer survivor keeps breathing
Michelle Cerone / Contributing Writer
Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: Page One
- Page 1 of 2 next >
Teresa Schumacher is "one in a million."
Schumacher, 53, was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer in June 2005. Although survival rates for SCLC are low, she has beaten the odds after undergoing chemotherapy and the cancer has not returned.
SCLC is found primarily in smokers and former smokers. But unlike many forms of lung cancer, the risk of developing small cell lung cancer does not decrease after a person quits smoking.
"I don't feel the hang of death anymore," Schumacher said while sitting in a conference room at the Hyatt Hotel Tuesday night. A recent Positron Emission Tomography scan found no cancer anywhere in her body. She credits her survival to a positive attitude and the numerous advances researchers have made in the last 10 years.
Schumacher was one of the women who attended the symposium, titled "Women and Lung Cancer: The Gender Specific Facts," in New Brunswick. The Lung Cancer Circle of Hope, a statewide grassroots organization, sponsored the event.
Approximately 30 people, mostly women who had survived lung cancer, attended the event.
The LCCH focuses on dispelling myths about the disease such as lung cancer being an old man's disease, only a smoker's disease or that more women dying of breast cancer than lung cancer.
LCCH President Susan Levin opened the event and introduced the speakers.
Levin founded the group in 2005 after her mother, a "never" smoker, passed away after a battle with the disease.
"I realized that no organization based in New Jersey looked at lung cancer," Levin said, adding that too many people think if they don't smoke, they won't die from lung cancer. "One out of five [who have lung cancer] never smoked."
Mika Sovak, an oncologist at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and Jill Siegfried, the co-director of the Cancer Program at the University of Pittsburgh, spoke at the event.
Siegfried explained how tobacco company owner R.J. Reynolds "fired" mascot Joe Camel in 1997, but the number of cigarette smokers has not decreased since 1960.
Schumacher, 53, was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer in June 2005. Although survival rates for SCLC are low, she has beaten the odds after undergoing chemotherapy and the cancer has not returned.
SCLC is found primarily in smokers and former smokers. But unlike many forms of lung cancer, the risk of developing small cell lung cancer does not decrease after a person quits smoking.
"I don't feel the hang of death anymore," Schumacher said while sitting in a conference room at the Hyatt Hotel Tuesday night. A recent Positron Emission Tomography scan found no cancer anywhere in her body. She credits her survival to a positive attitude and the numerous advances researchers have made in the last 10 years.
Schumacher was one of the women who attended the symposium, titled "Women and Lung Cancer: The Gender Specific Facts," in New Brunswick. The Lung Cancer Circle of Hope, a statewide grassroots organization, sponsored the event.
Approximately 30 people, mostly women who had survived lung cancer, attended the event.
The LCCH focuses on dispelling myths about the disease such as lung cancer being an old man's disease, only a smoker's disease or that more women dying of breast cancer than lung cancer.
LCCH President Susan Levin opened the event and introduced the speakers.
Levin founded the group in 2005 after her mother, a "never" smoker, passed away after a battle with the disease.
"I realized that no organization based in New Jersey looked at lung cancer," Levin said, adding that too many people think if they don't smoke, they won't die from lung cancer. "One out of five [who have lung cancer] never smoked."
Mika Sovak, an oncologist at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and Jill Siegfried, the co-director of the Cancer Program at the University of Pittsburgh, spoke at the event.
Siegfried explained how tobacco company owner R.J. Reynolds "fired" mascot Joe Camel in 1997, but the number of cigarette smokers has not decreased since 1960.