Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield Says "Stand Up 2 Cancer"

Friday all three major networks join forces for one cause...fighting cancer.

The Stand Up 2 Cancer movement is raising awareness and money to battle the disease.

For Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield the battle against cancer is a personal one.

Last year he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, "What you think just happens to other people can happen to you. And the sooner you know about it the better."

Littlefield had surgery shortly after his diagnosis and has had clean checkups ever since.

He calls himself one of the lucky ones who caught it early.

At ParkRidge Medical Center's Sarah Cannon Cancer Center Radiation Oncologist Stephen Golder fights the battle everyday, "It touches virtually every family. There is hardly anyone in this society that's not either had cancer personally or had a family member have it."

Golder says cancer is no longer the death sentence it once was.

He says more than half of his patients are cured.

He says technologies are evolving every day.

Littlefield hopes for even more, "I think we'll see great improvements and perhaps in some cancers an actual cure."

But any cancer losses are too many.

That's why both men say movements like Stand Up 2 Cancer are so important...Raising awareness of the disease and helping to find a cure.

Littlefield says, "It's present, it's something that affects us, and if we care about ourselves and we care about our families we better be attentive to it."

"Stand Up 2 Cancer" is live and commercial-free.

It starts Friday night at 8:00 right here on WDEF News 12.