Essays

What can transform a life-shattering moment into a triumphant crusade to share positivity? Read what this 4-year glioblastoma survivor says is the best medicine. Read More ›

From grateful to paranoid, betrayed to apprehensive, disfigured to hopeful, Maire Marran beautifully describes the multitude of feelings after undergoing bilateral mastectomy. Read More ›

My aspiration to be a loving husband and father, as well as an eager preceptor and mentor, was the same after my diagnosis as it had been before. We can choose to live a life undefined by cancer. Read More ›

By 2012, Mike Morris has completed a triathlon in all 50 states. In 2015, he hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro. Then, a CT scan showed that he had metastatic renal-cell carcinoma that spread to his brain. Read More ›

Parsing through tough decades-old memories, Brian Sluga takes us through what it was like to be diagnosed with testicular cancer in his 20s and to end up on the other side as a survivor. Read More ›

Dr. Gwamna lost her younger sister to breast cancer and a friend to ovarian cancer that spread to her stomach, so when she discovered a lump on her breast she was frozen in fear. Read More ›

After a 20-year career as a biomedical breast cancer researcher, Dr. Dana Brantley-Sieders was diagnosed with breast cancer and discovered that her scientific expertise didn’t prepare her for the challenges she faced as a patient. Read More ›

Sara Gilles, an athlete and physical therapist who completed several Ironman triathlons, was shocked by her breast cancer diagnosis in her early 50s. Her husband had to tell others about her diagnosis, because she was too traumatized to say “I have breast cancer.” Read More ›

Ann Glover found a lump on her chest in 2020, and learned the negative emotional impact a doctor can have on a patient by delivering news in an uncaring manner. Read More ›

Susie Sanchez remained calm on the outside after receiving her anal cancer diagnosis, but inside she was terrified, dealing with radiation therapy plus chemotherapy. She is now on a mission to tell people about the benefits of the HPV vaccine, which prevents anal cancer but wasn’t available to her when she was growing up. Read More ›