The other day, news broke out that doctors found malignant brain tumor in Senator Edward Kennedy.

From The Washington Post:

Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the liberal icon who has spent more than four decades at the forefront of social-change efforts in Congress, has a cancerous brain tumor, physicians at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital said yesterday.

A biopsy of a portion of Kennedy's brain identified a malignant glioma as the cause of the seizure that hospitalized him Saturday, according to a statement by Lee H. Schwamm, the hospital's vice chairman of neurology, and Larry Ronan, the 76-year-old senator's primary-care physician.

A glioma is the most common type of brain tumor, accounting for more than half of the 20,000 or so diagnosed in the United States each year. The prognosis for patients is poor, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Though his tumor cannot be removed he's back home from the hospital and that there is hope even how life sentencing brain cancer sound. The Senator is reportedly in high spirits, however grim the news can be.

On the happier front, David Cook is the newly-crowned American Idol. Yey! What has he got to do with brain cancer? Read on, from The Associated Press:

Or maybe being rebellious turned out to be worth the gamble for Cook; it's been suggested that a poor showing with the judges can drum up support from indignant or sympathetic voters.

Cook was overcome with emotion when he won, bending down toward the stage, his eyes filled with tears when he stood back up. It was the second time in as many nights that the scruffy, grainy-voiced belter had broken down.

And a few weeks earlier, when he seemed edgy and distracted, he acknowledged that he had "things going on," perhaps a vague reference to the struggles of his older brother, Adam, who is battling advanced brain cancer.

That's right, David Cook's older brother is battling advanced brain cancer.

Brain cancer sounds scary, indeed. But there is always hope, right? So we keep hoping. As long as treatments are available, there is always hope of surviving.

[In Photo: Damn The Statistics, I Have a Life to Live!: Coping with a Brain Tumor My Personal Story (Paperback) by Charles Wolf from Amazon]