Cancer is often the patient's first experience with a situation that combines awkwardness and uncertainty with a death-threat. Ten million Americans have beaten it. But you're going to have to be focused and inventive to join them.

Here are some treatment tips to consider:

•  If anything, err on the side of too much reaction to this situation. Put your treatment program ahead of most everything else in your life. Don't miss appointments. Follow ALL of the doctor's orders. Take your medicine.

•  Accept the consequences of the best course of treatment. So, for example, you may be changed by the radical surgery necessary to combat your cancer. Regret it. But if a second, independent opinion agrees with the first treatment recommendation, march forward. You probably only have two choices. The other one, dying, is worse.

•  Learn as much as you can about your specific brand of cancer. Get further understanding by joining a support group of patients like yourself, and by opening dialogs with one or more of the national organizations that focus in your areas of need.

•  Finally, be very wary of any course of healing - of any herb, vitamin, drug, or treatment - that someone other than your oncologist urges you to take. People think nothing of voicing their unfounded opinions of medicines and doctors, never considering that their advice could be dangerous or even fatal. Don't put someone down who is trying to be helpful. Sincerely thank them. But don't veer from you charted path. You should have only one healing team. Its leader, the guru you are betting your life on, is your oncologist.

If you have come to this page out of curiosity, the information you have just reviewed may be satisfactory. If you are a cancer patient, or if you are gathering information to help someone you care about, please review Sections V and VI of Living with Cancer.