A World Without Cancer

Someday I want to take my grandchildren to a museum. We will go to a traveling display entitled, "Former Cancer Treatments." There will be pictures and stories and surgical instruments that were used in the treatment of the disease. For example:

Pictures of The Ripper - an instrument that is no longer used in breast cancer surgery, when women suffered disfiguring mastectomies that included the removal of breast tissue and all the muscle, clear down to the bone.

I will talk about my dad, Stan Hankins, and the mask he wore during radiation for melanoma on his neck. How they screwed the mask to the table, so they could be very precise in the delivery of the dosage.

Dad with his mask, ringing the bell on May 9, 2011. Done with treatment.

I will talk to my grandkids about my radiation. How I entered a room with this sign on the door.

I will tell them that after getting me situated on the table, all healthy people had to leave and I would lie there and think, I am more than this disease.

I will talk about chemotherapy, about dripping super drugs in the veins and hair falling out and throwing up and nasty side effects and.......at this point my grandkids will look at me in horror and exclaim, "Grandma, we're glad we don't live in the Dark Ages anymore."

On Saturday, I will walk with over one thousand people at Chandler's Relay for Life. We will be awake all night, remembering the fact that cancer never sleeps. I will join the prayers, dreams, hopes and beliefs of people all over the world who long for the day when the cure for cancer will be found and the story I outlined above will be true.

The Mission of the American Cancer Society is to eliminate cancer and the suffering caused by cancer. The money raised at events like Relay go to four areas: Research, Education, Advocacy and Services for patients and families. I was impressed by the fact that 44 research scientists funded by the American Cancer Society have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. This includes James Watson, PhD in 1962, whose discovery with Francis Crick, MD, of the structure of DNA was a major breakthrough in molecular biology and E Donnall Thomas, MD, the father of bone marrow transplantation.

There are a lot of reasons I participate at Relay, but ultimately it is in the belief that it is possible to have a world where the only place my grandchildren will hear about cancer is in a museum.