The United Kingdom website Macmillan Cancer Support at www.macmillan.org.uk has information on many cancer types. It's a valuable website to explore where-ever you live in the world and it also has information specific to the United Kingdom where it's based.

The United Kingdom website Macmillan Cancer Support at www.macmillan.org.uk is "The UK's leading cancer information site: your one-stop site with over 6,000 pages of up-to-date cancer information, practical advice and support for cancer patients, their families and carers." (I've borrowed that quote from the former United Kingdom website called "Cancerbackup" which has now been incorporated into the Macmillan website - if you're looking for Cancerbackup on the net it's now Macmillan Cancer Support.)

If you join their online community you can run a homepage and a blog, post photos, and participate in forums, chat and groups.

Macmillan Cancer Support is one of the biggest and most comprehensive cancer websites worldwide and it covers most cancer types. I suggest adding it to your list of reliable sources of information about cancers and their treatment, along with the USA's National Cancer Institute website www.cancer.gov and the American Cancer Society's website www.cancer.org.

If you live in Canada I suggest checking out the Canadian Cancer Society website at www.cancer.ca and searching for information and resources relevant to Canada and your local region. The website comes in both English and French language versions.

The Irish Cancer Society has a website at www.cancer.ie which includes a message board (forum).

There are links to lymphedema websites on this page www.bestcancersites.com/lymphedema.

Fatigue is a common side-effect of cancers and their treatments. If you or someone you know is having problems with cancer-related fatigue you may find it worthwhile browsing some of the information and discussion about fatigue due to cancers and their treatments on some of the best cancer websites. Here are four reliable sites where there are articles or discussions on fatigue. The quickest way to find their info is to put the word fatigue into the search windows at the tops of their home pages and see what you can find: http://www.lls.org/hm_lls
http://www.breastcancer.org
http://www.cancer.org
http://www.cancer.gov

Radiation therapy: the USA's National Cancer Institute has an online book "Radiation Therapy and You: Support for People With Cancer" at www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/coping/radiation-therapy-and-you.

Various cancer treatment centres and medical teams around the world have set up websites to provide information on their facilities and services, and they may have quite detailed information about various kinds of cancers and their treatments. If you visit their websites it pays to be aware they are promoting their own particular facilities and treatments. Nevertheless their websites can be valuable sources of information as they are right at the coal face for treatment and research. Two good ones to explore are the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the USA at www.dana-farber.org and the Sidney Kimmell Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins in the USA at www.hopkinskimmelcancercenter.org. There's a list of USA cancer centers with links to their websites on this page of the National Cancer Institute website www.cancercenters.cancer.gov/cancer_centers/cancer-centers-names.html.

Numerous cancer-related websites and support groups have a presence on Facebook at www.facebook.com.

Cancercare is a large USA-based organisation "that provides free, professional support services for anyone affected by cancer." On their website at www.cancercare.org you can find some information resources, advice on such matters as financial assistance, and counseling services (online, telephone and face-to-face). There are also some online support groups or forums.

Lori Hope and compassionate communications about cancer When Lori Hope was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002, she turned her very extensive professional media skills and experience to a new challenge - learning and researching about how we can better and more compassionately communicate with and help those people in our lives who have cancer or other serious health problems. She then set about sharing the collected wisdom she had accumulated - she wrote a book "Help Me Live: 20 Things People with Cancer Want You to Know", and has lectured and given interviews widely on the subject and continued to learn. A very important aspect of the cancer journey is conversations about cancer - with relatives, partners, friends, work colleagues, members of medical teams, and many others. Until I encountered Lori Hope, I had no real conception of how challenging and important conversations about cancer can be for those with cancer, and for the people they converse with. It's like opening a door with a sign saying "cancer conversations - enter here" and expecting to find a few people sitting around a coffee table in a living room, and instead you see in front of you a vast assemblage of people stretching into the distance. A colorful Woodstock crowd, with Lori Hope on stage singing about this long neglected field of human interaction. You can explore Lori's world including links to some of her interviews and articles and to many sources of information and support for those with lung cancer, and information about her book and how to purchase it, on her website www.lorihope.com. She also writes a professional blog "Hope for Cancer: what helps, what hurts, what heals" for CarePages.com here. The collective experience is so much stronger than the experience of any one person, and Lori has gathered the collective experience of many many people in her book and her lectures and interviews and blog. The world will be a much better place when we all know a lot more about how to communicate effectively and compassionately about cancer and other serious health issues we will inevitably encounter in our lives.

The website Chemocare.com at www.chemocare.com is described as "designed to provide the latest information about chemotherapy to patients and their families, caregivers and friends. We are here to help by supplementing what you may already have learned from your healthcare professional". If you're involved with chemotherapy either as a patient or as a supporter, caregiver or health provider, I suggest visiting this site and exploring for information that may be relevant to your situation.

There are easy-to-understand sections called "What is Chemotherapy", "Managing Side Effects", "Eating Well During Chemotherapy", "Before and After Chemotherapy", "Complementary Medicine" and "Survivor Experiences". There's also an active message board (forum) where you can share information, experiences and support.

In the section "Chemotherapy Drugs" there is an A to Z list of chemotherapy drugs which includes detailed information about what each drug is used for, how it's administered, side effects, and how the drug works.

They cast their net fairly widely. They say "Sometimes referred to simply as "chemo", chemotherapy is used most often to describe drugs that kill cancer cells directly. These are sometimes referred to as "anti-cancer" drugs or "antineoplastics." Other chemo drugs such as biologic response modifiers, hormone therapy, and monoclonal antibodies, which work in different ways to treat cancer, are included in this web-site. Today's therapy uses more than 100 drugs to treat cancer."

Chemocare.com is a website of the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute (a cancer hospital in the U.S.).

The website RxList at www.rxlist.com - self-described as "The Internet Drug Index providing fast, reliable information to both the consumer and the medical professional" - has information about hundreds of medicinal drugs and also active forums or discussion boards on the more popular drugs as well as forums for discussing less popular drugs and alternative therapies. The link to their forums index page is www.rxlist.com/rxboard.htm.

A good website for finding clinical trials relating to any type of cancer is the USA Government’s National Cancer Institute site at www.cancer.gov - go to their home page and click on the link Clinical Trials, or click on this direct link www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials.

There's another USA Government website called ClinicalTrials.gov at www.clinicaltrials.gov where you can search for trials. “ClinicalTrials.gov offers up-to-date information for locating federally and privately supported clinical trials for a wide range of diseases and conditions” and “ClinicalTrials.gov currently contains approximately 12,600 clinical studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, other federal agencies, and private industry. Studies listed in the database are conducted in all 50 States and in over 100 countries. ClinicalTrials.gov receives over 4 million page views per month and hosts approximately 17,000 visitors daily.”

I suggest starting your search for clinical trials with the National Cancer Institute site and then trying the ClinicalTrials.gov site. I don't know if ClinicalTrials.gov includes the same database as the NCI site but it doesn’t use the same search form so it might turn up something different anyway. Both sites include trials around the world as well as those in the USA.

You could also try the “American Cancer Society /EmergingMed Clinical Trials Matching Service ... This free Clinical Trial Matching and Referral Service is made available to American Cancer Society visitors through a collaboration with EmergingMed. ... Fill out one questionnaire and within seconds you'll know if your profile matches any clinical trials in our system. The EmergingMed database contains more than 3,000 clinical trials for treatment, prevention and early detection of cancer.” Look for the link to clinical trials on the home page of the American Cancer Society at www.cancer.org or try this direct link http://clinicaltrials.cancer.org.

If you have concerns about fertility in relation to cancer and its treatment, go to this page www.bestcancersites.com/fertility for links to websites with information and support on fertility issues.

When regular treatment ends - now what? It can be a big relief when regular cancer treatment finishes but there can be unexpected challenges and difficulties. Suddenly the whirlwind of diagnosis and meetings and chemo rooms and hospital visits and interactions with numerous people comes to an end. Your sources of support may also dwindle as some people may assume your life will fully return to its pre-diagnosis normalcy. If you'd like to read about post-treatment challenges and ways to minimise difficulties, here are links to two discussions on the topic that you may find are valuable reading www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Livingwithandaftercancer/Lifeaftercancer/ www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/coping/life-after-treatment/.

NORD - the National Organisation for Rare Disorders - on their website at www.rarediseases.org has a database of rare disorders including many rare cancers. The database gives a list of alternative names for each disorder, some basic information about the disorder, and a list of organisations related to that disorder.

Daily Strength at www.dailystrength.org is a new website devoted to hosting support communities "for all health issues & life challenges". They say "DailyStrength was built to enable people facing life challenges to: a) simply and easily communicate their progress with friends, family, supporters, and have those people respond with encouragement and help. b) find others facing the same circumstances, and exchange experiences, treatments and even hugs within a safe community setting." Currently there are thirty-eight support communities for different kinds of cancers (including some poorly represented elsewhere on the internet), and communities for many other health issues you may be interested in such as lymphedema and fertility matters. The website is well set out and participation in communities is simple. You can post messages, and keep a journal and upload photos and videos if you wish.