There has also been some damage to his heart, for which he takes medication. "It's nothing major, but we have to keep an eye on it."
Grundy said for some childhood cancers, doctors have been able to secure remission with lower amounts of chemo and radiation - and that may reduce adverse effects later in life. But for other types, the maximal amount and intensity of treatment is still needed to achieve an acceptable cure rate.
Only time will tell how young patients will be affected, he said.
"We don't know what the late effects or what possible late effects there may be 30, 40, 50 years after cancer chemotherapy because we don't have a significant number of children who survived cancer from 30 and 40 years ago."
"We are getting a better handle on the incidence of effects 10 to 20 years off therapy, but for the further future that's still an open question."
When it comes to overall cancer statistics among Canadians of all ages, the society's Dr. Loraine Marrett said there has been remarkable progress over the last 10 to 15 years in preventing, diagnosing and treating many kinds of tumours.
But the disease still presents huge challenges: one Canadian is diagnosed with cancer every three minutes and one Canadian dies as a result of their malignancy every seven minutes, said Marrett, putting the statistics in stark day-to-day terms.
"Breast cancer continues to be the most common cancer in women with about 22,000 new diagnoses this year," she said. "The good news for breast cancer is that the death rate has been steadily declining and is about 25 per cent lower than it was 20 years ago."
While prostate cancer is the most common malignancy diagnosed in men (almost 25,000 cases), death rates have been declining over the past decade, she said.
"So lung cancer continues to be the Number 1 cause of cancer death in both men and women (20,000 in all) and colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death, with about 9,000 in both sexes combined," Marrett said.
Lung cancer in females continues to be of huge concern because incidence and death rates are persistently on the rise, and experts know it will be some time before reduced smoking patterns among women are favourably reflected in the statistics.
In fact, if lung cancer were removed from the equation, women's overall cancer death rate would be 20 per cent lower today than it was 25 years ago, said Marrett, "a dramatic indication of the impact of this cancer."
"So we've made some progress, but there still remains a lot to be done."
Canadian Cancer Society statistics for 2008:
New Cases: an estimated 166,400, up 6,500 from 2007.
Deaths: an estimated 73,800, 1,100 more than last year.
Survival: For 2001-2003, five-year survival for all cancers combined was 62 per cent (excluding Quebec).
Prevalence: In 2004, 2.5 per cent of Canadian men and 2.8 per cent of Canadian women were diagnosed with cancer in the previous 15 years.
MEN:
New cases: Between 1995 and 2004, incidence of stomach, larynx and lung cancers fell, while thyroid and liver cancers rose.
Death rate: Down overall since 1988 due to decreases in stomach, larynx, prostate, oral and lung cancers, and Hodgkin's lymphoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
