Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention

Judy Danchura found the cat in her backyard one day last June and put out some food. The feline was back again at her door meowing enough to wake her at 3 a.m. She let the cat in, prepared a litter, and retired to bed.

While Danchura and her husband slept, the cat jumped onto the bed and slowly walked across her body. As the cat stepped on one of her breasts, Danchura was struck by an strong shot of pain.

A lump was discovered.

“I sort of went, ‘Oh geez, there’s definitely something wrong there,’” she said.

The cat was considered a hero by finding a cancerous tumour in Judy Danchura’s breast She made a doctor’s appointment,then there were the tests and ultimately the diagnosis of cancer.

Due to the early detection of the malignant tumour, and since she was able to start treatment right away, Danchura’s possibility of survival is estimated at 95 per cent.

She is grateful to the cat, which she has now adopted.

“I don’t know what my chances of survival would have been without him,” she said. “I know I’d certainly be far worse off.”

Danchura named the cat Sumo but likes to refer to him as her “furry four-footed angel.”

“I sometimes feel overwhelmed because I feel humbled,” she said. “I can’t understand why this animal turned up for me.”

The Beauty of Seiji Ozawa

One time Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Seiji Ozawa has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. The cancer has been caught at an early stage and so Ozawa, 74, will stop conducting for six months to get treatment.

“I will abide by the doctors’ advice,” Ozawa said at a press conference. “I will be back within six months.”

Ozawa led the BSO for 29 years — longer than any other conductor in the orchestra’s history – before leaving in 2002. Unlike current music director James Levine, whose time is largely taken up in rehearsals and music-related events, Ozawa was a figure often spotted at Red Sox games and other public events. Back in April of 2002, people lined up outside Symphony Hall to get into a free concert Ozawa conducted as a kind of farewell to the city.

”He is as much a pillar of the Boston community as any of the sports stars or Teddy Kennedy,” David Rossman, a law professor at Boston University, told me. ”I think even people who don’t like music find it fulfilling to be here and share in something like this.”

Ozawa serves now as chief conductor of the Vienna State Opera.

Esophageal Cancer Survivor-ABC News

(video)

Or is the cancer another fraud?

Bernard Madoff is serving 150 years in prison for fraud. He defrauded investors of billions of dollars, but hasn’t been diagnosed with cancer and isn’t terminally ill as a newspaper reported, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons said.

The New York Post reported yesterday that Madoff was dying of cancer and that there were rumours he had pancreatic cancer.

“While the N.Y. Post story is full of inaccuracies, and we can’t specifically address all of them, we can tell you that Bernie Madoff is not terminally ill and has not been diagnosed with cancer,” a statement said.

Madoff, 71, is in a medium-security federal prison in Butner, N.C. He pleaded guilty in March to 11 counts of fraud, scam, and money laundering – worth $65 billion over 20 years.

He was sentenced to 150 years, which has fuelled speculation that any talk of terminal illness would be a ploy for leniency.

Prison Denies Madoff’s Cancer posted by Sandy Hutchens