Share Your Story

Most people have heard the term "new normal" for individuals living, surviving and struggling with cancer. What actually does that mean?

I don't know why my fear is bigger right now than the reality that I was a rock-star-warrior during the biggest, deepest, most tortuous experience of my life: cancer.

After receiving a diagnosis of colon cancer, one survivor started the Cancer Warrior Martial Arts Program, which honors kids and martial artists with their Cancer Warrior Black Belt and certificate for their courageous fight against cancer.

Telling my three young daughters about my cancer diagnosis was the hardest conversation of my life. Here are some tips I learned that I hope will help you navigate the conversation no one is prepared to have.

Going through a cancer diagnosis and treatment is so difficult. Thanks to my care team suggesting proton therapy, I never felt like my life became consumed by my lung cancer diagnosis.

By the time 14 months of treatment were through, I was watching a woman I no longer recognized and could not bear to look at in the mirror. I realized that to truly be a survivor, I had to readjust my expectations of myself.

The side effects of colorectal cancer and its treatment—which span beyond fertility issues—require constant renegotiation and reframing of what it means to be me.

If we have the capacity to love then we have to face grief as well, along with how it manifests in our lives—particularly through sleep.

When Joanne Lam was diagnosed with bladder cancer, her husband showed unwavering devotion in caring for her. Now it's her turn to be his caregiver.

A mastectomy can leave a lasting mark. This breast cancer survivor found her own unique way to make it a beautiful one.

A geneticist I never met in person saved my life by insisting my gastroenterologist do a new colonoscopy. Had it not been for Mellissa Clarkson, I would have battled a new cancer that may have been discovered too late.

A prostate cancer survivor offers his thoughts on what you should (and shouldn't) say to someone who was recently diagnosed.

When I began my medical oncology career more than 30 years ago, I was determined to be among the first generation of researchers to cure cancer.

All in all, I’m very pleased with being able to get my oral chemo directly from my clinic’s pharmacy. The staff knows me and they know my doctor.

Adaptive clinical trials are poised to deliver hope to patients with pancreatic cancer.

Treating people with cancer requires the coordination of complex care, and adding a clinical trial to the mix can pose more challenges.

I didn’t like thinking of myself as a “survivor.” There was something … I don’t know. Something a little shameful, maybe, about it.

Associating luck with any disease is unfair.

Twenty-year-old men think they are invincible. They wake up each morning thinking that nothing can stop them and that is one of the best feelings in the world.

I poignantly remember an eloquent wife of a patient who died of acute leukemia shared her analogy with me. She stated, “You know when my dog died, I got a card from my vet. When my husband died, I got nothing.”

Life after a hysterectomy is one of the many challenges I have had to overcome.

This is my survivor story and how my dragon boat involvement continues to help me get through my breast cancer journey.

I was given a three- to five-year life expectancy. I told my neuro-oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center that all I heard was that I could expect more life.