The C-Word

I'm going to take a break from my USHMM theme for this post because this is something that needs to be written about, I think. It affects us all at some point whether we are affected or we know someone who died from or survived it.

Yes, I'm talking about cancer.

Recently, my mother's mother was diagnosed with lymphoma. From my assumptions, the cancer is most likely Stage I which means its contained, but then again I'm not sure. Lymphoma is a common cancer of the lymphatic system that generally is divided into Hodgkin's or Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among other rarer subtypes. Prognosis with first round chemotherapy is very good but there is always a risk of relapse down the road. That risk goes down if it's treated early.

So why did I choose to write about this?

In my earlier post about my love for Grey's Anatomy and House I may have mentioned that my favorite character on House is Wilson, House's best friend who is an oncologist. Also while I was writing Saving Angels back in 2011 I had to do a lot of research on the basics of cancer and treatment options so I'd suffice it to say I know quite a bit about how the disease works without actually having an oncology degree.

As sad as this topic can be it's important to discuss cancer because most likely we will have some encounter or another with it in our lifetime. It's a leading cause of death worldwide as well as a research focus in many institutions. It's important that we're educated about the disease even though most of us will never be oncologists but still we all need to know some basics.

It's important that we talk about these things because we never know what might happen and we need to know that these things do happen.