If you have cancer and actually want to save yourself (rather than giving the appearance of wanting to save yourself, as all too many do), I would recommend buying and studying Cancer: Nutrition And Survival or The Cancer Breakthrough from http://www.lulu.com/ascorbate .
These may look like quackery to the casual observer, but the co-author, Dr Steve Hickey is very far from a quack. He is a relative of mine, and so I may be biased, but that means I can tell you that he is the single most intelligent human being I have ever had any contact with.
His doctorate is in medical biophysics, but it's from working with him (I proofread, fact-checked and helped research his books) that I first learned about Bayes' theorem, Solomonoff induction, and most of the other tools of advanced rationality. Unlike most people working in the medical sciences, he can actually think.
I have observed people with cancer who have read his books and followed his advice, and I have observed people with cancer who either haven't read these books or haven't followed the advice. In my experience the main difference between the two groups is that the former group are alive.
(I get no financial benefit whatsoever from these books, and any benefit to my uncle from a single sale is on the order of a latte from Starbucks. This is meant as as dispassionate a piece of advice as I can give.)
There was talk on another thread about members sharing their expertise so this is my attempt to do this even tho I'm probably too late to the party:
What this book cover tells me, no screams at me, is that this self-published author is above listening to advice of others or accepting offers of help. This probably means collaboration is off the table, too. They like to work in their own self-absorbed bubble of "genius" and much too readily pass off or ignore other's work or data that doesn't fit their own working narrative. Professional standards ...
Related to: People who want to save the world
I have recently been diagnosed with cancer, for which I am currently being treated with good prognosis. I've been reevaluating my life plans and priorities in response. To be clear, I estimate that the cancer is responsible for much less than half the total danger to my life. The universals - X-risks, diseases I don't have yet, traffic accidents, etc. - are worse.
I would like to affirm my desire to Save Myself (and Save The World For Myself). Saving the world is a prerequisite simply because the world is in danger. I believe my values are well aligned with those of the LW community; wanting to Save The World is a good applause light but I believe most people want to do so for selfish reasons.
I would also like to ask LW members: why do you prefer to contribute (in part) towards humankind-wide X-risk problems rather than more narrow but personally important issues? How do you determine the time- and risk- tradeoffs between things like saving money for healthcare, and investing money in preventing an unfriendly AI FOOM?
It is common advice here to focus on earning money and donating it to research, rather than donating in kind. How do you decide what portion of income to donate to SIAI, which to SENS, and which to keep as money for purely personal problems that others won't invest in? There's no conceptual difficulty here, but I have no idea how to quantify the risks involved.