John Depasquale, a 67-year-old retired police commander, looks at it this way. "If you want an apple, you go to the supermarket. If you need a car, you go to the car dealership. If you are facing cancer, you go to the people who only treat cancer at a cancer research hospital."

And that is exactly what John did when he discovered a suspicious lump on the back of his neck in 2000. A series of diagnostic tests determined John was suffering from an advanced stage of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system. He decided that Roswell Park was the only place for his treatment.

"From that first meeting with my doctor and his nurse, I felt their confidence that this was a disease they could beat. The diagnosis of cancer wasn't the end but the beginning," John recalls.

Standard chemotherapy put the cancer into remission and kept it away for two years. When the disease returned, John decided to participate in a clinical study. "My doctor's approach as he explained the study and his faith in what he was telling me were the deciding factors. I told him - let's do this." 

John received a new drug called lenalidomide, which is similar to thalidomide but is more potent and appears to lack some of the more common side effects of other treatments. He took one pill a day for 20 days, was off the medication for 10 days and then back on for another 20 days.

"I had absolutely no side effects. I didn't lose my hair or get sick. I wasn't sure the medication was working because I felt so good," John remembers.

The treatment did work. Follow-up bone marrow biopsies found no evidence of cancer. Today, John continues to enjoy retirement. He works out whenever he can and plays golf as often as the weather allows.

John's message of hope for the holidays: "First trust in God, then trust your doctors and have faith you are in the right place receiving the right treatment."