During my final semester of college, a life-changing call came. My mother was in the hospital, waiting for results of a biopsy of a tumor she’d found in her breast. My father told me that she’d already decided, if the tumor was malignant, she would proceed with a radical mastectomy ...

Ruth Travis knows the power of early detection. She started getting regular mammograms when she was 40 years old. After 22 years, the annual process was nothing new. In 2007, Ruth arrived for her annual screening mammogram [...] ...

For Betsy Glosik, the early 2000s brought one trauma after another. She lost her aunt to melanoma. Then, tragically she lost her 20-yr old daughter to a car accident. In 2003, after years of mentioning her concerns about a mole on her foot to her dermatologist, and repeatedly having her ...

Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma during her freshman year of high school at the age of 15, Erin Cummings recalls finding two lumps and not thinking much of them. “Cancer was the farthest thing from my mind,” she said. When her sister later noticed the lumps, Erin finally told her mom ...

As a Triple Negative Breast Cancer survivor, Sharon turned her personal experience into a passion for advocacy and giving back to the community. When she received her diagnosis in May 2015, she remembers being in a state of shock and grief. She said, “You have to allow yourself time to ...

Alique was first diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) at the age of four. Her mother, Michele, knew something was wrong because “the light in her eyes was gone”. After being told by doctors that there was nothing wrong, her family was relentless until new blood work uncovered blast cells ...

Amanda Helms was enjoying a bubble bath while reading a book when she looked down and noticed a lump on the side of her breast in January of 2020. She had a bad feeling about it instantly, even though she had no family history or risk factors. She went to ...

"Everyone has a place in the advocacy continuum: Your lived experience is important." Michael Holtz didn’t know that the “funky” digestive symptoms in December of 2011 would be the first signs of his cancer diagnosis. These rectal spasms would leave Michael rushing to the bathroom, and either nothing would happen ...

As Nicole C. Bullock, a non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivor, watched the news of hospital lockdowns during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, she couldn’t help but think of the cancer patients who faced the harsh reality that they would now have to receive treatment for their illness alone, without the ...

“Nobody wins afraid of losing” rings true for Kara Kenan, a breast cancer survivor. It’s her favorite line from Chris Stapleton’s song, “Starting Over,” which, for her, is symbolic of overcoming the fear of a cancer diagnosis and coming out on the other side. Kara recognizes that winning looks different ...