- stomach cancer
- heart attack on the dancefloor
- complication of AIDS-related cancer
- driving drunk
- lung cancer
- motorcycle accident
- old age (My great-grandma, actually. She was 94, but she passed away 4 1/2 months after her only living son died. She was absolutely grief-stricken when she slipped into a coma 2 weeks before she died.)
- Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma (A type of cancer that can grow in any body part, but generally effects the throat and chest area. It is unpreventable, incurable and -- due to the lack of research being done-- the only treatment currently available is surgery with clean margins. The average lifespan of someone who has been diagnosed is 10-15 years after diagnosis, and they have most likely been living with it for a few years before diagnosis. In the case of my husband, who had the disease, it was in a saliva gland in his trachea and later spread to his lung. Gradually, the growth became large enough that it made it very difficult for him to breathe. The scar tissue in his throat from the surgeries caused him to choke whenever he swallowed anything and the surgeries it took to keep his airway clear weakened his esophagus and eventually caused his death. He was 23 when he was diagnosed and just 4 days shy of his 32nd birthday when he died in 2008. For more information about the disease or ways that you can help spread awareness and boost research to find a treatment for the disease, visit the Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma Research Foundation at http://www.accrf.org.)
may 24 2010 ∞
jul 12 2010 +