Reasons to Relay

You’ve seen the little icon that accompanies my blog posts.  That picture is from a little more than two years ago at my senior year homecoming.  Long flowing curls, glowing skin, petite and exercised body – I was having the time of my life as I was preparing to navigate my final year of high school. 

By only seeing that picture, you might not recognize me on the street if you saw me today – short shaggy haircut, arms scarred with needle pockmarks, and a slightly swollen face from a heavy-hitting steroid.  Two years is a long time – a very long time, trust me, and like everyone always says, your life can easily take a dramatic turn in the blink of an eye at any given moment.  (“A left turn,” my aunt Judy said to me, “Not a wrong turn, maybe not the right turn, just a… left turn.”)

I was diagnosed with cancer, stage IV Hodgkin’s lymphoma, on Aug. 25, 2011.  I was working at Stonehill in the IT department, sitting in a meeting on that day when my cell phone buzzed beside me, my pediatrician’s name flashing across the screen.  I don’t remember the details of the phone call – I remember my mom was conferenced into the call, I remember the words “malignant cells” and I remember my pediatrician, bless him, comforting me by saying something like, “Don’t worry, my son had lymphoma too and he’s okay now.”

Well, I did just fine too, after the initial shock and horror of course.  Twenty-two weeks of intense chemotherapy, three surgeries, three ER visits and 17 radiation treatments later, that is.  Yes, I rocked the bald look for a while.  I did a semester of college from home.  It wasn’t easy but when you’re backed by arguably one of the best hospitals (I love you, Children’s) and cancer treatment centers (I love you, Dana Farber) in the world, it’s hard not to feel lucky.  As of 3/17/2012, I am officially in remission and I feel as if I can take only a very small fraction of the credit for it.

So this year, Relay for Life takes on an entirely different meaning for me.  I’ve been participating in Relay for Life since I was that long-haired baby-faced teen in my picture, keeping my passed grandparents and my mother (who suffered a few basal cell scares in the past) in mind as I walked laps with my friends.  However, this year I’m on the other side of the luminarias.  I’m the patient.  It’s surreal and if you had told me years that someday I’d be a cancer patient, I would have laughed.  But now I know, and for that reason, my fight is renewed. 

One thing that the Jimmy Fund is very good at is placing their patients within a network; making people feel like they are not alone as they fight the battle with cancer.  For me, as I was treated pediatric and 19 years old at my diagnosis, I was introduced to the Jimmy Fund Kids, a group of kids who were or are presently in treatment.  Getting to know the Jimmy Fund Kids and leaning on them for support has simultaneously been the best and one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my having cancer. 

On one hand, nobody knows what having cancer is like quite like another patient.  And on the other, there is nothing more scary and sad than meeting someone who isn’t quite as lucky as you to have a quickly treated cancer; someone whose chemo isn’t working, someone in relapse, someone who has already been in treatment for two plus years and can’t even tell you when they will finish.

So if you’re wondering why you should Relay, or if you’re rolling your eyes as yet another person asks you for a donation, let me just tell you this: your money helps.  Any money helps, it could support a trial that provides a new way to treat, or a new breakthrough.  Your money funds support groups, classes, meetings, treatment material beyond the medical realm.  Your support matters to us, knowing that you are not facing the C word without a community of people backing you up.  It makes a difference.  I know, I’ve been there. 

So if you need a reason to Relay, just look at me.  Cancer is one of the worst plagues of our generation, taking old and young, healthy and sickly alike, and every Relay for Life is just one step closer to nobody having to be effected by this disease like I have been. 

My life’s dream is that one day I can turn to my children and tell them I had cancer and to watch their faces not change, not flinch, not cringe, because I hope cancer will be as easy to treat someday as the common cold.  Each Relay brings us one step, one lap closer, and until then, Relay makes the lives of those affected so much easier.