Mary's cancer battle goes back twenty years when, both her father and mother suffered painful and agonizing death from abdominal and ovarian cancer. Five years ago, based on her family's medical history, she volunteered and was accepted to participate in a long-term national cancer research study at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. Shortly after joining the program, she was diagnosed as having breast cancer. This discovery caused us to become students of an obscure, dreadful, and horrifying subject. Cancer occurs when body cells become abnormal, divide and multiply without control or order, and result in the formation of tissue and growth of a tumor.
Tumors can be benign or malignant.
Benign tumors are not cancer, but malignant tumors are. Successful cancer treatment is complex, difficult, and may include a lumpectomy, the surgical removal of a lump, or a partial or complete removal of a breast. Chemotherapy, radiation, and hormone therapy are other remedies and approaches used by oncologists who are cancer specialists. The treatment is difficult and revolves around oncologists, radiologists, surgeons, and hospitals. Progress requires patience, determination, love, faith, and strength.