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.

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.

Ed Sawa, a 65-year-old male breast cancer survivor, describes his journey through treatment with his support system by his side. Ed hopes that by sharing his story he can help men better understand the possibility of being diagnosed with breast cancer.

Mary Trouba, who was encouraged by her sister to write about her experience as a patient with metastatic breast cancer, tackles the importance of the words we use when discussing cancer, explaining her problem with the phrase “battling cancer.”