I would have to disagree with the following statement in your 3/04 post at http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/mar2008/elleng34.htm which stated "This particular article is but one of many showing that chemo (and radiation) do NOT extend the life of one cancer patient over another with the same cancer who does NOTHING."

Back in May of 2004 my husband was in stage 4 of Hodgkins Lymphoma which is the final stage of this particular cancer before death. At that time his skin was turning yellow. He had fever and chills, and a pain in his lower back along with losing a lot of weight. The cancer was in his liver, spleen, lymph nodes, and bone marrow, and he kept falling asleep. I asked the doctor how much longer my husband would live if he didn't have the chemotherapy, and the doctor told me about 6 months. If my husband had done nothing, he would have died. So my husband went through 5 months of chemotherapy which involved having chemotherapy every other week until his last session at the end of Oct. 2004, and he is still alive to this day. However, Hodgkins Lymphoma is the most curable type of cancer, and it is terribly expensive as your article pointed out. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. If it hadn't been for my husband having both Medicare and AARP Healthcare Options Supplementary Insurance, we would not have been able to afford the chemotherapy. On the other hand, my husband's youngest sister's brother just died on 2/27 from colon cancer. I think that he had contracted colon cancer in 2005. In the last couple months, he was getting 5 chemotherapy treatments a week, and he still died. So the survival rates for each type of cancer are different. In my husband's case, the chemotherapy was life saving, but it's certainly not for everyone and not everybody can afford it. One lady who attended our church has chemotherapy for cancer, and she ended up with diabetes as a result.

In regard to the lump in the lymph nodes of my husband's neck which he discovered last month, it was originally very hard and about 1 and 1/4 inches across. I thought it might be a recuurence of Hodgkin's Lymphoma. However, the lump has greatly decreased in size since that time to almost nothing, and my husband is considering cancelling his doctor appointment on 3/12. Thanks everyone for your prayers fot my husband.