Survivors Network At Northwestern Memorial Hospital Helping Patients Deal With Life After Cancer
(CBS) -- June is National Cancer Survivor's Month in the U.S. A Chicago hospital offers help for patients to keep on going.
About 14 million people in the United States are cancer survivors.
Dr. Tim Pearman runs the cancer survivors network at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. He says America's survival rate began to increase in the 1970s.
"When Richard Nixon declared the War on Cancer, that actually led to a lot of funding that really did kind of turnaround these miserable survival trends for the better," Dr. Pearman said.
Pearman says survival is key but there are issues survivors face day-to-day: depression, anxiety, how to manage pain and fatigue and how to keep fit while surviving.
"Exercise is something I push with all of my patients and believe it or not, exercise seems to work just about as well as counseling and medication in treating depression and anxiety."
The Cancer Survivorship Institute at Northwestern serves patients of all ages and is open seven days a week.