October 25, 2024/Midnight

Erie, Pa-– According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, over 300,000 people are projected to be diagnosed with breast cancer this year.

According to the American Cancer Society, this year the United States alone is projected to have over 2 million new cases of cancer.

But even without these numbers, it’s easy for me to notice the rise in cancer cases. I’ve seen it in my own life: through the lives of my friends and family.

It seems like more and more often, I’m getting the unfortunate call. That someone else I know has gotten cancer.

The first time I remember getting the news, I was a child. My grandmother had just called my mother, to tell her that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Because I was so young, I didn’t understand the severity of the news. My grandmother is a woman that has always been described as full of life and energetic. Someone that seemed untouchable by a disease like breast cancer.

Over the next few months, she went through chemo and treatment, and luckily recovered.

Throughout my life, more people I knew would tell me the news of their diagnoses. As I got older, I started to understand what the word ‘cancer’ really meant.

With a history of cancer in my family, I’ve always had a quiet understanding in the back of my mind that one day, cancer might be a possibility in my own life. But it wasn’t until January of this year that I truly realized what that could mean.

In January, I went for a routine dermatology appointment. There, a biopsy was performed on my back. When the lab results came back, they weren’t good. The lab had found irregular cell growth, otherwise referred to as precancerous cell growth. They did another biopsy, removing more skin, and in time, the lab results came back clear.

While this is a routine procedure, and something that plenty of people go through, the few days where I had to wait for news from the lab gave me time to reflect.

I had never given people enough credit for the bravery it must have taken to tell people they have cancer. I had never thought about the moment right after someone gets the news.

I had never thought about what goes through your mind when getting that news. Would I have to stop classes? Would I have to drop out of school if I needed extensive treatment? Of course, you tell your family and friends. But who else should know? How do you decide who should know, and to whom it would just be oversharing?

While I am perfectly healthy now, the questions that ran through my mind those days have stuck with me. Both my admiration and grief have skyrocketed for those with cancer who have had to answer those questions, and many more.

October is breast cancer awareness month. This month, I want to take time and reflect on the bravery and perseverance of all those who have had cancer. But also, I want to ask: is this normal?

Cancer is on the rise, there’s no doubt about it. An article from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center points out that while cancer is on the rise among young adults, there isn’t one specific cause. In fact, cancer itself isn’t one specific disease: instead, it’s a collection of over 400 diseases, all with different severities and effects. The cause for the rise in cancer isn’t one thing, but a collection of diet, genetic, and environmental issues.

I won’t pretend to understand the complexities behind cancer. But with the United States alone projected to diagnose over 2 million new cases of cancer this year, an unfortunate record, I only hope that we can reevaluate what truly matter in our lives, and what truly matters for our health.