Although you may be terribly frightened of even the

thought of cancer, it is no longer an automatic death sen-

tence. This is said so often, in fact, that it sounds like a clich& But

the truth is that it/s a fact: more people than ever survive cancer and

go on to live happy, normal, and productive lives. Almost all of these

increases in survival and good health are the result of chemotherapy.

Surgery and radiation, the other two major types of cancer treat-

ment, still have a strong place in cancer therapeutics, and they will

be discussed briefly in this book. However, it is chemotherapy (the use

of drugs and biologics to fight the disease) that has caused cancer to

evolve from a hopeless and always fatal group of diseases to what in

many cases is a chronic disease that can be controlled and often cured

entirely

In fact, about half of all diagnosed cancers are cured (up from 39

percent in 1973 to 56 percent today), and the National Cancer

Institute (NCI) estimates that more than 8 million Americans alive

today have had cancer. More than 300,000 Americans each year can

say, "I had cancer, but I don t now." It is highly likely that if you

were diagnosed early and began treatment right away, you too will

regain your health.

This is not to say that your cancer is definitely curable, because

some types of the disease have a much higher cure rate than others,

and factors other than the type and amount of treatment affect

whether you will survive it. But even if cancer cannot be definitively