By Ann Fonfa

On March 6th the lymphedema community will celebrate the 22nd annual Lymphedema Awareness Day, otherwise known as Lymphedema D-Day. But despite all these years of awareness, lymphedema is still not curable and remains “an unfortunate side effect” of conventional treatment for cancer. It’s time for the medical community to acknowledge that lymphedema is often avoidable and linked to lymph node removal.
It’s common practice for oncologists to recommend lymph node removal after cancer diagnosis. Removal of lymph nodes occurs with many cancers – breast cancer, prostate cancer, cervical cancer, colon cancer, melanoma, ovarian cancer, and others too.
The conventional medical view is that lymph nodes contain cancer cells and therefore must be removed. At the same time, cancer is a systemic disease, so
