Survivors
For a list of survivor stories by cancer type, click the Type of Cancer and follow the link at the bottom of the page.
National Cancer Survivors Day®
is Sunday, June 3, 2012
From family members to close friends, everyone knows someone whose life has been touched by cancer. On Sunday, June 3, 2012, hundreds of communities throughout the world will observe the 25th annual National Cancer Survivors Day. Communities will host events on this day to honor cancer survivors and show that life after a cancer diagnosis can be meaningful, fulfilling, and even inspiring.
A Look through My Window
by Ryan Hamner
It’s been 14 years since my last bout with Hodgkin lymphoma, but regardless of the medications I was on at the time, I vividly remember looking out the hospital window while battling an infection just before my stem-cell transplant. It was an infection that left me with a fever like I had never had before; I couldn’t move and was in a great deal of pain.
On the Other Side of the Diagnosis
by Mary-Jo Murphy, MS, RN, CDE
“I am a nurse,” I say to the surgeon, as if that explains that he can be different with me, less guarded, more frank. I’m trying to tell him, I will understand your jargon. Skip the euphemisms. In fact, I will be alert for anything that smacks of not telling the whole truth.
A Different Take on Breast Cancer
by Liza Vann
People say I have a different take on this disease – that I didn’t do it like everyone else. You see, it didn’t seem to bother me that I had cancer. Cancer doesn’t have to be harder than anything else that will ever happen to you. Having cancer doesn’t have to be harder than not having cancer. It’s just different. It just is what it is.
A Journey Completed
by Alyssa Phillips
My story has a happy ending, but it didn’t exactly start out that way – at all. In order for me to tell you how I got to where I am today and what I learned along the way, I must first tell you where I began.
Redefining ‘Survivor’
by Nicole Malato
There are different definitions of “survivor.” Until recently, I had always thought it was someone who “beat cancer” and went on to remission for many years. Now I am learning that using that definition minimizes the experiences of other survivors and prevents those who have earned the title from rightfully using it. I am embracing the fact that I am indeed a survivor already. I have overcome the many obstacles to earn this honorable distinction.
Fifth Lilly Oncology On Canvas Art Competition Invites All Touched by Cancer to Share Their Cancer Journeys
Get your canvases, paintbrushes and cameras ready — the subject is cancer and you are the storyteller. Lilly Oncology and the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) today announced the launch of the 2012 Lilly Oncology On Canvas: Expressions of a Cancer Journey Art Competition and Exhibition. The biennial competition invites individuals from the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada, who were diagnosed with any type of cancer — as well as their families, friends, caregivers and healthcare providers — to express, through art and narrative, the life-affirming changes that give their cancer journeys meaning.
Fighting for Two
by Roxanne Martinez
Imagine learning you are pregnant, then being diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer days later. That was the predicament I found myself in last November. Days after receiving the devastating diagnosis and with a whirlwind of emotions, I scheduled my first obstetrician appointment and my initial meetings with my surgeon and oncologist – all on the same day.
