Cancer changed my life, but cancer research saved it. Following a two-year suspicion-to-decision interval, I was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer and not given very good odds to even see a fifth anniversary. I got surgery with two different regimes of chemotherapy. I also had a month of daily radiation at the end of all […]
The survival rate for acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) in the 1990s was about 10 per cent. By the 2010s it was about 90 per cent. These numbers tell you why, when I was diagnosed with APL in 2017, I was told that I had won the lottery. Right place. Right time. But it wasn’t luck
It started with back pain. It was during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. I went to the doctor and wanted to make sure everything was okay. I had some tests done, and it turned out I had stage 2 adenocarcinoma. It was extremely shocking for me because I was a nonsmoker. I never
“You have cancer, and we will have to remove your voice box, or you will not live to see your 19th birthday.” When my oncologist first said these words I laughed, thinking it was all a big joke. Turns out, it wasn’t. I was diagnosed with Stage IV laryngeal cancer in 2006, at the age
Beth Ciavaglia talks about how a clinical trial changed the course of her cancer treatment. I’m a six-year breast cancer survivor, and research changed my life because it allowed me to not have to endure ongoing treatments that brought a lot of negative side effects. After I was done active treatment — which involved chemotherapy,
I went from “healthy” to “terminal” in the blink of an eye. In 2013, after years of clean physical exams, my doctors detected a gynaecological tumour the size of a golf ball. Turns out cancer had been growing, hidden inside my Bartholin gland, for as long as five years. Though I felt great and had
Cancer research has changed my life because it gave me an extra year with my father, who was diagnosed with a rare cancer called bile duct cancer. We advocated for him to participate in a clinical trial, and because of that trial, we were very fortunate to have him with us for an extra year
Cancer research has fundamentally meant the difference between me seeing 40 years old and not seeing 40 years old. I’m a mom of two small kids. I have a daughter who is six and a son who is nine. At the time I was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in 2022, my kids were little
It’s easy to feel powerless when you’re diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. My diagnosis in 2017 was especially complex. My breast cancer had already spread by the time it was detected, and doctors also found a second primary cancer in my thyroid. As a result, my treatment options were limited and my family’s
Cancer research changed my life because I was lucky enough to be a part of a team that discovered a drug that impacted cancer patients. I remember being thrilled one day when I was talking with a former colleague. She was telling me that the drug we worked on together was “melting” the tumours of
