Post by Rhonda on May 20, 2009 20:35:01 GMT -5
Survivors Rule!
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Cancer Book
By Matthew Zachary
Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
~Voltaire
December 27th, 1995.
I was twenty-one years old and one semester away from graduating from college, en route to film school with musical ambitions to become the next John Williams. I'd been classically trained for more than ten years with a romp through jazz, new age, electronic, and pop/rock. I wanted nothing more than to be creative and write music for film and TV.
But first, someone had to explain why my speech was slurring, why I kept fainting, why I had crippling headaches, and, most importantly, why my left hand, my dominant one, had lost all of its fine motor coordination, rendering me unable to sit at the piano and play, grip a pen, or type on the computer.
I had an MRI and the next six months were a blur. It went something like this: scan, brain tumor, surgery, cancer diagnosis, lots of radiation therapy. And all I wanted to do that entire time was graduate in May and play the piano. I wanted to forget that cancer had ever happened.
That was thirteen years ago and, considering I was given a fifty percent chance of living for five years, I think I can safely say it's been fun proving my prognosticators wrong, although I do remember them saying my hair would grow back.
It took me five years to regain full use of my left hand and play piano again, so instead of heading off to film school I spent several years building a new life, working in IT, marketing, and advertising. I grew far away from cancer and everything and everyone surrounding it.
The release of my first solo piano album (which was written in my head all the years I was assiduously retraining myself), unexpectedly hurled me back into the cancer world I was so excited to have finally escaped from. I had made the album to regain what cancer had taken away from me. Invariably, what got the most attention was the story of how I had finally overcome the effects of cancer. The response was unanticipated and I became a spokesman for many others who shared a common experience.
And I've never looked back.
I quit my cushy job on Madison Avenue. More than 200 concert appearances and speaking engagements later, I've given in to destiny by reinvesting myself¯mind, body, and spirit¯into the world of cancer advocacy.
The bottom line is, no one should have to go through what I went through, but if they do, they should not feel like they're the only one on the planet. Isolation is the number one psychosocial issue facing cancer survivors between the ages of fifteen and thirty-nine, a population referred to as young adult. I took up the cause of young adult cancer advocacy because little had been done to recognize this oft-forgotten community within the cancer continuum.
Roughly 68,000 young adults are stricken with cancer each year, up two hundred percent over the past twenty years. But survival rates for young adults remain largely unchanged. Rhetorically, if I were diagnosed again today with the same cancer, my outcome would be the same, in spite of all the major advances in prevention, early detection, and medical technology.
In 2007, I founded the I'm Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of young adults affected by cancer. As a national voice for the next generation of survivors, we have become a global support community.
One month after our launch, we were profiled in The New York Times and soon after, we were ranked one of Time's Best 50 Websites for 2007. I was invited to join the Google Health Advisory Council to represent the interests of the more than one million young adult survivors in the United States.
Thanks to a new relationship with Lifetime Television, millions of viewers watched as I guest-starred on an episode of Side Order of Life as the host of a hip cancer support "happy hour" where one of the show's main characters (a survivor herself) goes to hang out with likeminded peers. It was the first time in television history where a young adult was accurately represented¯not as a bald and pitied victim but as a "normal" person. It was a wake up call for Johnny Couch Potato and showed what young adults with cancer look like.
There are currently few clinical trials or cancer research projects focused on young adults. Why? We're too small a population, I guess. The young adult cancer problem is only going to be solved by and within the young adult community, from the demographic that's brought us MySpace, Facebook and YouTube.
It's my personal mission not only to mobilize and activate GenX/Y but to develop our own "me generation" philanthropy model to solve our own problems with the same fervor we've shown for American Idol. We can create lasting social change to overcome this generational health disparity. We fight because remission is not a cure and survivorship is all the rage.
Thirteen years have passed since I was initially diagnosed. I'm now married, fertile (again), an author, a radio show host, a blogger, and big mouth rabble-rouser in the cancer universe. I couldn't ask for a better life and I have cancer to thank for it. I know it sounds weird but here we are, and I wouldn't rather be anywhere else.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Cancer Book
By Matthew Zachary
Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
~Voltaire
December 27th, 1995.
I was twenty-one years old and one semester away from graduating from college, en route to film school with musical ambitions to become the next John Williams. I'd been classically trained for more than ten years with a romp through jazz, new age, electronic, and pop/rock. I wanted nothing more than to be creative and write music for film and TV.
But first, someone had to explain why my speech was slurring, why I kept fainting, why I had crippling headaches, and, most importantly, why my left hand, my dominant one, had lost all of its fine motor coordination, rendering me unable to sit at the piano and play, grip a pen, or type on the computer.
I had an MRI and the next six months were a blur. It went something like this: scan, brain tumor, surgery, cancer diagnosis, lots of radiation therapy. And all I wanted to do that entire time was graduate in May and play the piano. I wanted to forget that cancer had ever happened.
That was thirteen years ago and, considering I was given a fifty percent chance of living for five years, I think I can safely say it's been fun proving my prognosticators wrong, although I do remember them saying my hair would grow back.
It took me five years to regain full use of my left hand and play piano again, so instead of heading off to film school I spent several years building a new life, working in IT, marketing, and advertising. I grew far away from cancer and everything and everyone surrounding it.
The release of my first solo piano album (which was written in my head all the years I was assiduously retraining myself), unexpectedly hurled me back into the cancer world I was so excited to have finally escaped from. I had made the album to regain what cancer had taken away from me. Invariably, what got the most attention was the story of how I had finally overcome the effects of cancer. The response was unanticipated and I became a spokesman for many others who shared a common experience.
And I've never looked back.
I quit my cushy job on Madison Avenue. More than 200 concert appearances and speaking engagements later, I've given in to destiny by reinvesting myself¯mind, body, and spirit¯into the world of cancer advocacy.
The bottom line is, no one should have to go through what I went through, but if they do, they should not feel like they're the only one on the planet. Isolation is the number one psychosocial issue facing cancer survivors between the ages of fifteen and thirty-nine, a population referred to as young adult. I took up the cause of young adult cancer advocacy because little had been done to recognize this oft-forgotten community within the cancer continuum.
Roughly 68,000 young adults are stricken with cancer each year, up two hundred percent over the past twenty years. But survival rates for young adults remain largely unchanged. Rhetorically, if I were diagnosed again today with the same cancer, my outcome would be the same, in spite of all the major advances in prevention, early detection, and medical technology.
In 2007, I founded the I'm Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of young adults affected by cancer. As a national voice for the next generation of survivors, we have become a global support community.
One month after our launch, we were profiled in The New York Times and soon after, we were ranked one of Time's Best 50 Websites for 2007. I was invited to join the Google Health Advisory Council to represent the interests of the more than one million young adult survivors in the United States.
Thanks to a new relationship with Lifetime Television, millions of viewers watched as I guest-starred on an episode of Side Order of Life as the host of a hip cancer support "happy hour" where one of the show's main characters (a survivor herself) goes to hang out with likeminded peers. It was the first time in television history where a young adult was accurately represented¯not as a bald and pitied victim but as a "normal" person. It was a wake up call for Johnny Couch Potato and showed what young adults with cancer look like.
There are currently few clinical trials or cancer research projects focused on young adults. Why? We're too small a population, I guess. The young adult cancer problem is only going to be solved by and within the young adult community, from the demographic that's brought us MySpace, Facebook and YouTube.
It's my personal mission not only to mobilize and activate GenX/Y but to develop our own "me generation" philanthropy model to solve our own problems with the same fervor we've shown for American Idol. We can create lasting social change to overcome this generational health disparity. We fight because remission is not a cure and survivorship is all the rage.
Thirteen years have passed since I was initially diagnosed. I'm now married, fertile (again), an author, a radio show host, a blogger, and big mouth rabble-rouser in the cancer universe. I couldn't ask for a better life and I have cancer to thank for it. I know it sounds weird but here we are, and I wouldn't rather be anywhere else.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~