Like everyone else, I have opinions but not so many facts. I think we can reasonably say that smoking heightens your chances of cancer, but if my grandfather is anything to go by, doesn't always cause it (decades of pipe smoking - lived to 93 - could have had lung, throat, mouth cancer but died as his heart stopped of old age). Alcohol, other carcinogens and stress may also be contributing factors, but again not causes in themselves. We do know that cancer cells are opportunistic, metastasise and are not so easy to kill as we would like. So seems reasonable to me that the factors that lead one person to get cancer and another not to aren't one cause, but the hard to predict result of multiple contributing factors. What we can say is stress isn't good for us in general terms. Unfortunately it can take something like cancer to make some of us really accept that. I haven't had a history of terrible things to bear, far from it, a very fortunate life, but it took me to post cancer counseling to realise that my idea of a normal pace of life was far from normal!! But every lesson learned is worthwhile, whenever it happens. As is every extra year.
