Patient Stories

Mark Ryan, RN, is not worried about the impact of climate change on the weather, but on skin cancer, which he knows first-hand. A decrease in stratospheric ozone requires stringent environmental regulations to prevent cancer, he says.

After putting off her neck pain for months, Susan Keller found that she had lymphoma, describing how her loving husband helped her change her attitude and persist through it all.

Sabrina Steinback’s mom died from COVID-19 in 2020, and then Sabrina had a lumpectomy to remove breast cancer at the end of the year.

Karen Ann Rowe writes an impassioned and funny letter to the doctors who found their way into her life through her many run-ins with cancer.

Edward Sawa was waking up with headaches that disrupted his daily activities and ended up being diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia and breast cancer. Read the lessons he’s learned as a male with breast cancer.

When Veronica Brent had a constant cough and shortness of breath from walking, her daughter suggested she should have a chest x-ray. The x-ray showed she had lung cancer, and a biopsy showed she had cancer on the pancreas. She was concerned how to break the news to the family.

Plunging from nightmare to nightmare, Serena was diagnosed with breast cancer, while her 39-year-old husband, Robert, had a stroke, which claimed his speech and movement, leaving him “trapped in a thoroughly trashed body.” Paying the medical bills added to their struggles during the pandemic.